


Alphabet of the Sten

by Maybethings



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Dreams, F/M, Fixing Logic, Gen, Kossith, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Qun, Qunari, Qunlat, conlang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-16
Updated: 2012-09-18
Packaged: 2017-11-02 03:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 27
Words: 22,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/364487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maybethings/pseuds/Maybethings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>26 aspects of the Sten of the Beresaad--past, present and future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A is for Asala

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Combination-NC’s Karl alphabet, and a slew of other DA Alphabets, here is one for Sten.
> 
> A note before I begin: The codex and Sten himself do not agree on how long he has possessed Asala, but I think I will trust the sword’s owner on this one.

He was  _imekari,_ but not for much longer. The boy had just turned twelve, the age when a Qunari begins to master his role—and he’d just fallen in love.

She was long, straight lines and clean, sharp edges. She was a blade that gleamed like a full moon. She was a grip that sat snugly in his graceless hands, as if she were made for him alone—though she weighed heavily in hands still partly-trained.

“She is yours now,” said the Arishok. “Do you know where this blade comes from?”

****

He turned the greatsword once in his hands. How could he _not_? The styling of the hilt, the patterns in the blue steel, the shape of the blade: all of these spoke of Tevinter. This was a weapon of those who hounded the boy and his people for the simple reason that they existed.

“It is an enemy blade,” he answered, and the Arishok gave him A Look. It told him his answer was that of the boy he was, and not…whatever he was soon to become. No soldier he’d seen wielded a blade quite like this one. Qunari blades were more simple in form, more elegant. More brutal. He had seen vaarad who fought with dragon-jaws, weapons with terrible, tearing teeth. The Tevinter called them ‘saw swords’. 

“Even kabethari may become enlightened,” the war-leader said. “Everything under the Qun has its purpose. Long before us, our people have been under attack. This was a blade taken from our first victory against Tevinter. One day, this land will be enlightened; she and her kind are the proof we will endure against them.”

The sword felt that much heavier in the boy’s hands, then—the weight of history and meaning understood. But he squared his shoulders and lifted the blade shoulder-high, pressing his lips lightly to the blade in acceptance. The metal was nicked and scarred here and there, yet showed not a fleck of rust or dirt. Her grip had known a slew of hands before his, and he felt that it would know many more after him.

The sword was as much a part of the Qun now as he was.

The Arishok continued to speak. “Serve her well, _imekari_ , and she will guard your life. Keep her strong, and you will be made stronger. You see this sword has been wielded by many of the _beresaad_  before you. She will be your soul.”

The boy’s heart skipped a beat. The vanguard was not a name trotted out lightly, if at all. He knew some of his ability—but understood then what it  _could_ be. ”As it is to be, Arishok,” he replied.

“You will be the eyes and ears of our people. And you and your brothers will answer directly to me, or he who comes after me—one day. But for now, _karasaad_ , you will train.”

He entered the Arishok’s presence a child. Karasaad left it as a man, a soldier, with his _asala_ on his back: his soul, purpose and role forged into the blade. Except for a brief, dark period in his life, she never left his side again.


	2. B is for Braids

"Sten! Hey, Sten, have you drowned in there or something?"

The Warden's rough, eager voice split Sten's peace, as did her tapping on the bathchamber door. He grimaced as he rinsed his face, cold water trickling down his jaw and dripping delicately on the Arl's floor. His hair, newly clean, hung loose over his shoulders; he secured the whole silvery mess at the nape of his neck with a spare bit of cord before opening the door.

"You require something, _kadan_?" he asked.

"Ah, lucky me. You took your hair down," the Warden said, looking up at him. She stood in jerkin and breeches as he did, a small and sturdy figure who barely reached his armpits. The drunken dwarf was standing next to her, staring with suspicious concentration at his head. He frowned.

"What of it?"

"Duster here thinks you can braid your hair blind," Oghren snorted, nudging the Warden none too gently with one elbow. "And I say you can't. Not in a month of feastdays."

"Stone knows where he got a sovereign to wager, let alone _two_."

"Your man can't play Diamondback to save his life. More importantly: I can't even plait my beard in a mirror sometimes! How's the big lug supposed to do it with his eyes shut?!"

"He's not half-soused all the time, for a start," the Warden snapped stiffly.

"This is pointless,  _kadan_. There is a country to be united and a Blight to end," Sten growled, turning away and flicking a stray lock of hair off his forehead. He would have preferred to finish his toilet before his hair dried completely. Who knew when they would next meet clean, running water?

"Hold up, Sten. There's a counter-wager," the Warden said, raising one finger to forestall his leaving. "If you  _can_ do it, I will make you a whole tray of cookies. Wynne gave me a recipe."

Sten considered the offer in silence. At length, he nodded and jabbed one open hand at the Warden's chest.

"Eh? What?"

"It is Fereldan custom to clasp hands to seal a pact."

The Warden's face went from confusion to clarity, then amusement, in a single blink. "Put 'er there, _salroka_!" she exclaimed, slapping her small palm into his and pumping once.

* * *

It didn't take long to gather the whole party in the castle pantry. "To referee," Oghren had said. Lies. They were all there to ogle--which the elven assassin was doing much more blatantly than most. He suspected none of them had seen him with his hair out of its usual braids, and it was...discomfiting. With all the instincts of an entertainer, the dwarf held up two tarnished gold discs, palmed them and slammed them upon the table with a dull clink.

"There's your gold. Now let's see him do his hair with his eyes closed, Warden."

"Zev." The Warden tipped her chin in his direction. "Your eyes are the sharpest. Keep things fair, will you?"

"I should be delighted to observe such a fine specimen," he replied, pulling up a chair across from Sten and gazing unashamedly. Well, two could play at showmanship. Sten took a breath, cracked his knuckles and deliberately shut his eyes.

"Ready?" a familiar voice called out across the darkness.

"Ready!"

"Yes."

"Go!"

Without a single beat of hesitation, Sten _went_ , parting a section of hair cleanly and braiding it close to the scalp. His movements were quick and smooth, his fingers deft as they moved in a familiar cadence. Finishing the first braid, he reached into one of his pockets for a small metal ring, clipping it to the end of the hair. He then switched to the other side of his head, braiding its partner. The hubbub around him gradually melted away as he focused on his work.

_Three pillars of the Qun--mastery of self, mastery of choice, mastery of the world. When woven together, they formed the core of a Qunari._

The _antaam_ did not generally bother with their hair; it was customary for the Arishok himself to wage war with his locks loose. But a Qunari's face was framed by horns, horns that kept much of their hair away from their face in battle.

Usually.

It was a hornless Kataari who had taught him long ago how to keep his hair back, showed him once and left him to learn the rest. The man even had braids in his _beard_ , something that had boggled a young Karashok to no end. Small, untrained fingers eventually became broader, more flexible tools, able to control that small part of himself without further assistance.

_Ten braids, just as there are fingers on the hands. Bound high, as a qunari does not look down in shame, or upward in pride. He simply looks to what lies ahead._

By the time he had completed about half of his task, only Oghren was still mouthing off occasionally. When he was done, the whole crowd had fallen silent. He secured the last braid, gathered all ten up in both hands and tied them back, opening his eyes at last. Oghren was staring. Alistair looked like he didn't know _where_ to fix his gaze. Zevran and the Warden looked decidedly impressed.

Without a single hint of his previous bluster, Oghren rose from his seat, picked up the gold pieces and flicked them at the Warden. She snatched them out of the air with a nod of her head, and turned to Sten, a satisfied grin spreading across her face.

"So, anything special you want in those cookies?" she asked.


	3. C is for Cinnamon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “There was a village in the mountains of Seheron. Farmers. They grew cinnamon and nutmeg trees in perfectly ordered rows…”

He was Karasten, young and strong and fairly bursting with life. The sun beat down warmly on his bare shoulders, squares and lines of bold crimson warpaint painted across them.

“Get your gear together,” the Sten said, his face twice as grim as usual. Quite the feat. “Another has been lost.”

Karasten raised his brows, buckled Asala tighter on his back and fell in with the others. He had a feeling that they would finally find someone that day.

At that point, they _had_ to.

* * *

The house was a small one, with everything in its usual place. There were, however, certain important things missing: about a week’s worth of rations, a harvesting knife and its Qunari occupant. Karasten noticed a long splash of red on the wall. He touched it; it was still damp. None of the farming village would have cause to wear warpaint.

Those left behind described a quiet, gentle man, who found his joy and purpose in the green vistas before him. Squinting in the bright mountain sun, Karasten gazed across the land. Row after unerringly straight row of trees filled his vision, their glossy leaves every imaginable shade of green. The air hung warm and heavy over the scene, and he found a certain peace and order to it all.

“You will find him, won’t you?” one of the women asked. A few locks of hair tumbled from below the elf’s scarf, short fine fluff the colour of the cinnamon flowers.

 _Yes,_ Karasten wanted to say. “We will try,” the Sten replied in their stead.

* * *

The village sent someone with them into the heart of the jungle: another farmer, the missing man’s neighbour. He was armed with only his harvesting knife, a broad blade the length of his hand with a grip bound by cords as green as the foliage around them. The sounds of wildcats made him flinch, his eyes darting left and right for the sight of a long and tawny deathbringer, but he walked with them nevertheless. Someone else would tend the trees, pluck fruit and dry spices. His duty was there with them, if only for this one day.

The jungle was filled with other sounds also: the quiet hums, creaks and chirps of insects, the twittering of birds, the occasional whoop and shriek of monkeys in the treetops (usually followed by the crashing of branches against each other as they fled.) A harsh, croaking caw, and then another, added a dissonant note to the whole tableau.

Unbidden, the hairs on the back of Karasten’s neck prickled.

“ _Teth a_!” their Karashok called out somewhere in front of them. He and the others quickened their pace, closing upon the sound of his voice. The rush of rapidly running water filled Karasten’s ears. The soil grew damp and soft beneath his boots, the air heavy with the smell of water. He pushed forward, eager to see the man they’d finally found—and recoiled.

The corpse lay upon the river bank, face and chest submerged in the water, the welts of a crude whip all over its back. One of its horns was broken off almost at the root. Ants and beetles were already crawling over the body, and the crows had taken one of its eyes and some flesh over the ribs. The gaping, pale hole at its neck and the fast-flowing water spoke of how the harvester had been taken—tortured first, probably, then slaughtered and left to the elements.

Worst yet, the Qunari’s knife was missing, as evidenced by an empty sheath at the corpse’s side. The torture and desecration of a living body was one thing. To leave a man to die soulless was completely another.

“This was his,” the harvester said hollowly, motioning to a scar on the sole of the corpse’s foot where a shoe had been kicked off or lost. He sheathed his own blade with trembling, sun-burnt hands. “What have they done? Why would they do this to him?”

Karasten leaned heavily against a wild cinnamon tree. Its new leaves were deep pink in the fragmented sunlight. The sun was blazing down too bright now. The water ran too loud. His brothers’ warpaint shone too red. For all that he was a soldier, his stomach twisted in agony. The sour taste that rose in his mouth nearly choked him.

The Ashaad knelt by the body, drawing a small prayerbook from a satchel at his side. “Struggle is illusion,” he intoned quietly. It was the only comfort they could provide now. “Tides rise, tides fall; the sea is changeless. There is no struggle. Victory is in the Qun.”

It was one of the few times they ever successfully recovered a victim of the Tal-Vashoth. Whatever else he becomes, Karasten never forgets it.

* * *

Almost a year later, not far from that mountain village, the Beresaad cornered a Tal-Vashoth armed with two knives: little things bound with dirty green cord. Karasten dealt the final blow himself.


	4. D is for Duty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a collab with Taffia's Arishok alphabet. You'll find B is for Beresaad at <http://archiveofourown.org/works/347195/chapters/564298>.

Sten had been in Qunandar for four months when he received the Arishok’s summons. The last lamps in the training yard were being lit, the last bouts being fought. He ordered his men to continue their sparring, and left at once, stopping only to wash his face of the day’s grime and grit. It wasn’t polite to keep the Arishok waiting.

He reached the high-pillared hall just before the first stars appeared in the sky. It was a place not unfamiliar to him; it mirrored the Arishok’s smaller residence on Seheron. Fashioned of plain, pale stone, its walls bore carvings of Qunari history and military triumphs. One or two had been added since he received Asala and joined the antaam. A number of hardy potted plants hung from beams near the ceiling—at any other time, they would be softening the harsh tropical sunlight. Upon the far wall, behind the dragon-headed seat where the Arishok gave audiences, was a stark black slab of stone carved with name upon name upon name. There were far more now than when he had first entered such a hall, a gangly little thing of few years and little knowledge. For these fallen souls, and their descendants, Sten and the antaam fought every day of their lives. One day, perhaps his name would be marked there too. It was a place of duty. It was a place of honour.

It was also uncharacteristically empty, save for the Arishok himself, in the armour of his office and gazing intently out across the ocean. Odd. There was usually a contingent of guards present with the warleader, even a small one.

“The Sten of the Beresaad answers the Arishok’s summons,” he said, bowing his head in greeting.

The Arishok did not turn, merely nodding slightly. “I must give you a new duty, Sten,” he said, without any preamble. “What is the Blight?”

Sten blinked. “I do not understand, Arishok.” The kithshoks, surely, would be able to furnish a more suitable answer. He kept in contact with the overseer of the western docks while his duties brought him to Par Vollen—mostly because they had been fostered together. Over tea, the man had recently spoken of a certain…sickliness in certain goods from across the southern seas. The metal was not as strong, the fabric not as vibrant, the crops not as flavourful. It was as if the life had been drained out of these things by something yet unidentified. And if it could affect such things, what might it do to men?

What was the Blight, indeed.

The Arishok turned then, regarding Sten with a steady gaze full of trust. “It is what we must discover, Qunari, for the good of us all.  It threatens this…Ferelden…but other nations appear to view it with undeniable dread.  If it shakes the foundations of Tevinter, we must know of it.  Our situation is too precarious to lose control, now.”

Sten understood this well. Tevinter pressed them sorely by the day, and any threat to either side had to be grasped and understood for the good of their people. To question would be to delay comprehension—and yet, this was a task that required great care and skill. Both of which he and his men had been equipped with. “What would you have me do, Arishok?”

“Assemble your Beresaad. I trust you to know who is worthy…but only take a few.  A small number, nothing to be viewed as a threat by these bas.  We do not yet know them.”

Sten gave assent, and the Arishok dismissed him. The demand of the Qun had been conveyed. He returned to the barracks without further ceremony, mentally paging through a list of names and ranks.

Seven, then. Seven of his brothers would do quite nicely.

* * *

A handful of the vanguard were roused from their quarters by a night-time summons, and they gathered to find their Sten waiting for them, his expression solemn, his eyes alight with purpose, and in full armour.

“The Arishok has a question that demands an answer.” He explained the task that fell to them, and added, “I have chosen all of you for a reason. The Blight is an unknown factor. Our people have not crossed the southern oceans in any great number since the _bas_ accords. The Qun requires the best eyes and ears we have. Are there any questions?”

Not a one flinched. (He dared say the karasaad even looked a little insulted, but—he was young.) ”As it is to be,” Sten said with a nod, satisfied that his choice had been wise.

Tomorrow, they would make their final preparations, slick warpaint upon cheeks and chest in a sealing of vows. And with the sunset, they would take ship to the bas lands. It would be the last night any of them would sleep in a familiar bed. He would not keep them from such things now.

“Duty compels us, _kadanra,_ ” he said to his brothers as he dismissed them. ”And whatever it takes, we will answer.”


	5. E is for Enemy

He was _imekari_ , barely old enough to remember faces, or ages, or a good number of names. But he knew that it was dark, and they were hiding, and he had to be quiet.

The tamassrans had banded their charges into small groups, shepherding them down stairs and through trapdoors into this place. The older children chivvied their juniors along, helping to keep order and make sure none had fallen behind. Whatever it was that was coming, they knew—the look in their eyes, part anxiety and part fear, spoke volumes where lips did not. A few of the very small ones slept now, curled up against each other and lulled into drowsiness by their surroundings. But the boy was more in control of himself than that. He sat quietly in the middle of the floor with his peers, back straight and eyes alert, and watched motes of dust dance in a sliver of light.

“Be still, little ones, and come away from the walls,” the tamassran closest to him said. “We must not let the enemy find us.”

This was a word he did not yet know. There were words like _good_ and _bad_ , _food_ and _drink_ , _day_ and _night_ , _danger_ and _safe_ , _wrong_ and _right_ and _struggle_. These were easy. But _enemy_ sounded and felt like nothing he knew, and he could not understand it.

But he did understand that it was dark and they were hiding. So he waited.

The light bounced off a dagger at the tamassran’s hip, a slender, vicious thing with a wavy blade and a forked tip. He looked around. Another tamassran, the one who took care of the newborns, had a similar blade strapped to her back. A third stood close to the wall, gripping a woven leather shield firmly in her hands. It confused him. Women did not fight, but today they wore steel and showed it in their eyes. Beyond the walls and darkness, he heard, faintly, the voices of men and the scrape and clank of soldiers’ armour.

It struck the _imekari_ , then: what would happen if they were found?

Suddenly, the world heaved beneath his feet. The floor shook. The walls shuddered. The air roared. The shield-bearer shouted two sharp syllables he didn’t catch, and the other tamassrans gathered protectively around their charges. His throat closed around a sharp, terrible smell in the air. _Danger, bad, wrong,_ his mind shrieked. The children instinctively huddled together, crying out in fear and panic. Boom after boom shook the world, as if the sky had gone mad.

The tamassrans huddled around them, shushing and soothing with soft words and names against their ears: little bas, dear heart, good child, quiet little one. Do not fear. Be silent. Be still. They will not take you.

A little voice piped up in the boy’s mind: _They_ who?

Still the world roared around them, the voices of men a roiling chaos far away. It was dark. They were hiding. Dust choked out the light. He could not breathe. The boy was convinced that the world itself was ending.

* * *

He didn’t know when he’d dropped off to sleep, but he felt a tamassran shaking him awake. The earth had stopped shaking, and the air hummed no longer. “It is safe now, imekari. We leave,” she told him, her voice sounding muffled in his besieged ears. He rubbed his eyes open and followed her out, in none too good a temper. His throat felt raw and dry, and he dearly wanted a drink of water.

He forgot all about it when they emerged into the light.

Raw destruction surrounded the boy, as far as his eyes could see. Dark, curling clouds of smoke dimmed the sun. A sickly yellow haze that stank of ash and stone hung in the air. Seheron’s mightiest genalok, where craftsmen and farmers distributed the fruits of their labour, lay still and silent. The tiled floor was a mess of clay and stone shards, its pillars marred with huge scorch marks as if from a dragon’s breath. Almost every other building in the area had holes punched through walls, roofs missing, windows shattered. It was as if a hundred years of storms had blown through the city at once. The soldiers bore away corpses, parts of corpses, maimed comrades covered in blood darker than warpaint. There was no mourning, but there was no joy, either. A pall of resignation hung over them all.

“What did this?” the boy asked the tamassran. Her dagger still hung at her hip, sheathed now.

“Magic,” she replied.

“Why?” It seemed important to know. When he did wrong, he was punished. Had they done something to this enemy, to make it so that they killed and scorched and destroyed?

“Simply because we are here, dear heart.”

All around him, the boy’s brothers and sisters were crying, tired, afraid. Something fought furiously deep inside him, something hot and thorny that made him want to break away from the group and run and yell and throw stones, but in the next instant a tired sadness washed over him and he let the tamassrans guide them back to the qunlok without further questions.

For many nights after that, his dreams shuddered and shook and roared.

The boy learned then that _enemy_ was _hate_ and _rage_ and _sorrow_ , all together. It was fear, despair, and evil. It was dead men, a hum in the air, scorched pillars, burned buildings. But first and foremost _, enemy_ meant _magic,_ and it took many years before the two words even began to differ in meaning.


	6. F is for Farewell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In media res with Parting Gifts, which you can read on AO3 at <http://archiveofourown.org/works/364468>.

The first sign something was wrong was when the Warden peeled her helmet off and let it drop to the floor, shaking her dark braids loose. She maintained her armour with a zeal any Qunari would be pleased to observe. Such cavalier actions were unlike her.

The second was when she turned to him, ordering him to get their companions to safety. It was not the words she used. It was the tears that accompanied them, large fat drops sliding down her bloody cheeks. He had never seen the dwarf cry. Her expression was calm and determined, but the fire in her deep green eyes had been snuffed out.

The third was when she turned away and charged, with a smile suddenly too wide and eyes suddenly too bright, one last yelled command trailing behind her.

_“Say the Prayers for the Dead at my funeral, kadan!”_

* * *

“I _really_ don’t like goodbyes,” the Warden said out of nowhere, scratching Gelert’s ears absently. The mountain night was still, save for the crackle and snap of burning logs, the mabari’s contented panting, and wolves howling dismally somewhere far away.

“As all things have a beginning, so must they have an end,” Sten replied.

“Is that out of the Qun?”

“No. It is common sense.”

“For you, maybe.” She paused in her ministrations, and Gelert nudged her hand until she started up again. “My ma? Branded like I was. And her ma before her. And a thousand dusters before them, for as long as anyone remembers. Harrowmont won’t change that.” The Warden’s mouth contorted as if it were filled with bile.

“You eliminated the obstacles before you in recruiting your people. This is not a regrettable choice.”

“Is it?” Gelert yelped as her hand twisted in his fur. “I betrayed my sister for what I felt was right. Nothing but that feeling. Not that _you’d_ know anything about family—” She cut herself off and sighed, squeezing the bridge of her nose. “No, that’s not fair. I’m sorry, Sten. Just…forget I said anything.”

“As you wish.” Minutes stretched out like hours in the glow of the fire as they resumed their watch.

“Hey, um, Sten.”

“Yes?”

“Doesn’t the pain ever stop?” she asked, the words brittle and despairing.

“I do not know, _kadan_.”

* * *

The bard saw them first.

Sten led the way, cradling a small heap of dragonbone plate in his arms. He hadn’t forgotten the helmet, either. Behind him, Wynne hobbled forward, supported by one of Shale’s craggy arms. And beside the Qunari trailed Gelert, ears and tail drooping and looking for all the world like the sun had been snuffed from his sky.

Leliana cried harder than he’d ever seen anyone cry in his life.

They laid her in the cool and dark, among the other dead, in the underground belly of the royal castle. And through it all, while the others wept and mourned, Sten remained dry-eyed, speaking not a word. There was nothing _to_ mourn, nobody to direct it at. She who had pushed them through darkspawn and demons and Blight was gone.

He realised then that all the words she’d spoken at the gates, the lopsided smiles and promises and ear-scratches and final commands, had been her way of saying farewell without uttering the word itself.

She didn’t like goodbyes. He still remembered.

* * *

“After the battle tomorrow, I might need you to do something for me. Then we’ll be square. About your sword, and all.”

Something about her words sounded wrong, felt forced. But she had returned his soul, and they were _kadan_  and he owed her that much trust, at least. ”If it is within my ability, it will be done,” he replied.

The Warden still seemed ill at ease, perhaps nervous about the coming battle, but the tension fell away as she sat and talked with him for a while. She even wangled a promise out of him, somehow, that if they survived they would return to Seheron together.

“It will be a long journey, _kadan_.”

“I won’t mind. I love traveling—or haven’t you noticed?”

He _had_. Oh, he really had. But it would be good, he thought as he sharpened his blade, to make his way home with company at his side.

* * *

Alistair was the last person he'd expected to see on the docks, a few hours after the Warden's funeral. “I don't think I've seen you out of armour since...well, since Lothering,” the human finally uttered after a long, goggle-eyed stare.

“Appreciate the moment,” was Sten's pithy reply. He had lost his Qunari armour to the darkspawn, as well as his helmet, and he had no more warpaint, but he faced the water now much as he’d left it: bare-chested, thickly-booted, and with his soul on his back. “Why are you here?”

“Came to see you off, naturally. It’s no fun tromping off into the unknown alone. Not that you don’t know where you’re going, but…I saw what you did at the funeral. The prayers, and all. Thank you for doing that for her.” He looked to the sky and the black shadows of fishing birds swooping over the water, squinting more than the sun would have caused him to. “It’s hard to believe she’s really gone.”

Sten nodded. “A man may be swallowed by the earth or swept up by the tide; memories of him will fade and disappear. But the choices he makes, the duties he fulfills, the actions he chooses; all these things endure.”

“Is that your philosophy speaking?”

“No. Simply common sense.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Alistair said at length. “I mean, I knew her—you knew her, we all did, for almost a year. I loved her, and she fought for all this and she was _here_ , and that meant _something._ That won’t ever go away. And I’ll make sure they don’t forget what she’s done,” he added, eyes flashing with fire.

“For once, you are right.”

“Huh. Yes, I’ll miss our heartfelt conversations too.” He bent to Gelert, wagging his tail at Sten’s side, and patted him one last time. “There’s your ship, Gelert. Now be a good boy, and look out for Sten. Oh, and bring him back for a visit soon, yes?” Gelert bayed his assent, licking Alistair’s cheek roughly.

“Pray that does not happen, for your sake. Only war would merit my return.” Without even the saving grace of his _kadan_ , Ferelden was merely another  _basra_ land— _basra_ land that he had saved from a terrible threat, but still requiring enlightenment and a measure of certainty. He prayed that he would not be the one to deliver it. Sten shouldered his pack, glancing to the ship about to sail, and nodded to Alistair. ” _Panahedan_ , Warden.”

“Farewell, Sten. And a safe journey.”

The ship’s sails puffed out majestically in the wind as Sten finally headed home, soul and honour intact and with a sturdy companion by his side. He turned his gaze back to Ferelden’s shores only once, watching the muddy green chunk of land recede into the distance. He closed his eyes, calling up images of the Warden and her party. When he opened them again there was only the ocean, as far as the eye could see.

Still, he could almost picture his _kadan_ before him, her sword raised and shield high.


	7. G is for Gift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something else in line with the events of [Parting Gifts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/364468) and [Change](http://archiveofourown.org/works/364470).

The ship left Seheron in the gold hours of the evening. Word had spread fast—enough of it, at least, for the city to know that eight of the Beresaad were headed into the harsh, cold south to fulfil a demand of the Qun. Some of the antaam gathered at the wharf to see them off. _Anaan esaam kadan_ , some cheered.  _Ataash Qunari_ , another group roared.

And above all that, a high, cheerful voice called out “Sten! _Meraadan_!”

He turned, peering at the source of the sound through his visor. A Qunari woman, clad in the simple off-white robes of a qunlok librarian, was running toward him with something in her hand. Something soft and flowing, the same grey-purple as her underrobe and the cords that bound her hair.

Ribbons.

“ _Meraadan_!” _Brother_ , she called him, _one of the tide, one of us_. “I have a gift for you, before you go. Your sword, if you please?”

A gift given in good cheer is not to be turned down. Sten removed his helmet, then drew Asala. She looped the cloth around the sword’s crossbar, along the grooves of the metal, and tied it in knots that would endure the journey to come. Behind them both, he heard Karasten chuckle dryly to himself, but really, the man was in no position to talk. In the red bands wound around his bladed staff was a single scrap of cloth that might have once been the dark blue of a genaaran’s robes.

He only spoke when she lifted her head from her work and stepped back, satisfied. “What is the purpose of this, Talmaas?”

“For luck,” Talmaas said with a little smile. Her pale gold eyes shone kindly before them. “And to remind you that your home awaits your safe return. All of you.”

Sten nodded, raising Asala once to shoulder-height in a salute to the crowd, and to the truth-keeper, before sheathing her again. “ _Asit tal-eb_. We will return bearing answers, sister.”

* * *

Only one of the Beresaad made it back home, in the end. One of the Beresaad and a large dog, at any rate.

The hardwood boards creaked gently under Sten’s solemn footsteps, and rather more loudly below the mabari’s exuberant pawfalls. All activity on the docks stopped for a heartbeat as his return was registered. The last man of the Beresaad stood without armour and without warpaint, but every new scar upon his body told them that he had fought his way back every step of the way. And his soul was intact; no true Qunari would have dared a return without his _asala_. Somewhere along the line the ribbons bound around her had been soiled and frayed, but what remained clung doggedly to the blue steel. Talmaas’ token had endured.

Word of his return spread with surprising speed, even for the Qunari. A small crowd gathered as Gelert introduced himself to the kithshoks by sniffing them up and down, with a few solid licks thrown in for good measure. Right at the back, Sten saw a familiar pair of gold eyes. Talmaas gave him a little smile when their gazes met, warm and full, but she did not keep him from the duty that was still his to fulfil.

She did come to find him three days later, after the celebration of his return. Evening was fading into night, and Sten sat alone near the viddathlok, his clothes smelling of incense and spices and his hair short and loose—a mourning cut, out of respect for his brothers. The mabari, curled up at his feet, cracked an eye open at her approach but didn’t so much as growl.

“ _Shanedan_ ,” she greeted him. “It is good, that one of the Beresaad returned from the south, at least.”

“My brothers fought hard,” Sten replied, making room for her on the carved stone bench. “They did us proud.” He frowned slightly. “I only regret their souls could not be returned to the Qun.”

“A taarbas will be sent for them, no doubt.” Slowly, deliberately, she tidied away the locks of hair that the wind had worked loose. “I don’t suppose I could ask for my gift back, brother?”

“They are in no condition to be returned, sister,” he said wryly. “The darkspawn liked the taste of them…and in truth, I wish to keep them with me.”

“Oh?” Talmaas’ smile was almost playful. “For what purpose?”

“A reminder,” he replied. “A reminder that my home is wherever I take it.”

Her head dipped gracefully, once, the setting sun giving her braids an edge of warm fire and her horns a sheen of gold. “Of course you may. Only remember not to lose what’s left of them.”

“I will not. You have my word.” A dry chuckle escaped him. “Would you like a cookie?”

“A what?”

“A cookie.” The word sounded harsh and foreign. Very foreign. “Little baked things, like bread, but sweeter. A gift of sorts, from the Grey Warden.” He proffered her a small pouch filled with the aforementioned _kuukis_. She took one, curious.

“It will have to do, in place of the ribbon you will not return.” She took a bite—then another, larger one. “ _Kost_! The _genaaran_ have outdone themselves!”

“They were made with care,” was all he would say, and they maintained a companionable silence for the rest of the night as the four points of the Sword shone bright in the Seheran sky: a sight Sten had once despaired of ever seeing again. He was home.


	8. H is for Herbs

He was three weeks uncaged, and the priestess-not-priestess was looking at him in a most discomfiting manner.

“You were picking flowers!” Leliana exclaimed. Sten suppressed a groan, his hand discreetly—and _quickly_ —sliding behind his back.

“No, I wasn’t,” he replied quickly. A little  _too_  quickly.

“You were!”

“…They were medicinal,” he countered.

“You’re a big softie,” the bard giggled, and up in front the Warden’s features battled madly against a smile.

“What you wish to do with all that yarroway I have _no_ idea, Sten.” Morrigan slipped behind him, plucking one of the frothy white flowerheads out of his grip. “Planning to bleed someone to death, are we?”

“Clearly you know more of destruction than of healing, mage.”

“If you doubt my skills, do not come running to me when your arm dangles by a thread,” she sniffed.

Sten ignored her, bundling the rest of the blooms together and slipping them into his pack. “We will never speak of this again. Let us move on.”

“Says the duster picking pretty flowers,” the Warden snorted as they ventured deeper into the Brecilian Forest—minutes before they were swarmed by werewolves.

* * *

“Get some sleep, Sten, I’ll take the last wuh—now what are you doing?” The Warden stopped in her tracks, staring at the Qunari busily sorting bunches of green out on a flat stone. Her mabari looked on, having been cautioned once, firmly, to look and not eat. Smart beast. “Nice, uh…collection?”

He gave her a long, dry look as she poked up the fire. “For one who is resistant to magic, you rely much on the mage’s crude healing. They are creatures of destruction; creation is not their domain.”

“There are only so many poultices to go around. And we’ve already used quite a few of ‘em over these past few days.” She flexed a stiff, bandaged arm, peering more closely at one of the bunches. “Hold up, that’s elfroot, isn’t it? That one on the right.”

“You learn.” Sten pointed out each plant by name, trying not to lapse into Qunlat halfway. “Elfroot. Deathroot. Yarroway. Fennel. Soldier’s woundwort. Mint. Nettles.”

“Whoa, whoa! So many? Do we really need _all_ these?”

“As each person has a duty, so each plant has its own purpose. A mage carries danger in its blood, always. Demons and spirits hunt it at every hour of the day. The trees around you, the flowers at your feet—the heart of the forest itself provides, if you know where to look. I trust in these more than any magic.”

“Even though the trees in _this_ forest try to stamp you into pancakes?”

“A plant will not try to possess you, Warden.”

The Warden picked up a head of fennel, the blooms a bit squashed but their golden yellow still cheerful under starlight. “I suppose they  _do_ look nice.”

“The blooms are pleasing to the eye,” he muttered in agreement. A strange, wheezing cackle bubbled up from the Warden, growing in volume by the second. The mabari shot her a look of confusion, unfamiliar with this new and unsettling sound. Sten's brows rose just a little. She was  _laughing_. Really laughing.

“I knew it,” she gasped, “Leliana was right. You _are_ a softie. _”_

“Warden,” Sten began warningly.

“—But you’re _our_ softie. The biggest, toughest, meanest duster of a softie I know. And I’m glad you’re on our side. And prepared.” She waved her uninjured hand encouragingly. “Do carry on.”

He nodded, stowing his stash of herbs—flowers, stalks, roots and all. “You are not as callow as I thought. That is unexpected.”

“Um, thanks?” She sounded genuinely surprised. “I guess we can talk more when it’s light. There’s a lot I want to ask.”

“I am hardly surprised,” he replied, and much to his surprise he found a thread of humour snaking through his words.

Perhaps it was the fennel talking.


	9. I is for Iron

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head  
> The thunder of the drums dictates  
> The rhythm of the falls, the number of deaths,  
> The rising of the horns ahead—
> 
> \- Iron, Woodkid

He was newly Sten, and the horns were sounding. Their long, urgent notes called to the Qunoran of Seheron, urging them to rise and take action. Then the drums boomed forth, their cadence strong and steady. Their voice stirred the blood, echoed in the heart. None could deny their message: the enemy was on the move.

Sten stood at the frontlines, exactly where they needed him. Behind him stood his men and comrades, and hundreds like them. All were decked with warpaint, the naked steel of their weapons gleaming softly in the light of dawn. Before him was the cannon line, fully-primed with  _gaatlok_  and loaded with iron lumps the size of Qunari heads. No mage or magical shield could withstand the force of such a blow. (They’d checked.)

A soft cloud of dust grew visible on the horizon. His grip on Asala tightened, and his eyes narrowed behind his helmet, a thing of sharp lines and thin slots fitted snugly to his skull in the absence of horns. His pauldrons were heavy upon his shoulders, but their good, solid weight tied him to the battleground. The same went for the plaited steel of his couters and polyns, and his reinforced gauntlets and boots—but that was all the protection he wore. In the heat and damp of the jungle, a full suit of  _bas_ steel and padding would court death by heatstroke. Beside him, an arvaarad clad in a similar fashion uttered a soft word to his karataam. Their heavy chains clanked; a mage growled gutturally. They would not be released until the very end.

Sten touched one hand to the karasten at his side, crouched by the cannon with flint at the ready. “ _Teth a,_ ” he murmured. When did they all start looking so raw, so untried? “Don’t fire until you can see the light of their eyes.” The young soldier swallowed, almost imperceptibly, and nodded.

Then, the enemy fell upon them.

“ _Vinek kathas_!” roared the Arishok's second, raising his staff high against the sun's crimson light. Flints were sparked, once, twice. The antaam braced themselves as fuses hissed and sputtered, and every cannon roared with the voice of a dragon, spitting flame and metal into the enemy's ranks. Their screams rent the smoky air.

"For the Qun!" Sten thundered, and they charged as a single body, pouncing upon the ragged remains of the Tevene warriors, mowing them down with the ferocity of those who knew the price of invigilance. His sword clashed against steel and more steel and cloth and porcelain armour. A blow slipped past his defenses; the taste of blood spiked in his mouth. If his assailant was expecting him to flinch, they would be disappointed. The pain and copper tang only unlocked something fierce and terrible inside him. With a cry more beast than man, Sten swung Asala in a vicious arc, hewing a mage in two, slashing a rogue's arm from his torso.

Everything seemed slow and bright and clear in that fragile moment. Blood ran warm against his lip, its taste bitter yet welcome. The dust they raised turned the air golden and heavy. Asala gleamed like silver. He could hear his every breath, feel every heartbeat pump blood through his limbs. He could see fear and loathing in the enemy's eyes as the Qunari pushed them back and struck them down. Distantly, he heard the crackle of magic unleashed as a saarebas, hands unfettered, conjured a ball of sputtering, spiking energy. Almost as one, as if by instinct, the antaam fell back. Confused and frantic, the bas pushed forward, seeking an advantage. Just in time to be wreathed in lightning and thunder.

Not a single Tevene survivor was left that day. Slowly, the drums of war faded from his ears, the thrum of heralding horns from his chest. Sten rose from a haze of heat and blood-frenzy to find himself somehow, miraculously whole, although his pauldrons were now dented and scored as any bas warrior's shield. The ironcraft of the Qun, light in battle and heavy in peace, had kept him safe, had sung with the iron of his blood. It had kept him strong.

"Glory to the Qun!" someone yelled over the din, and raising Asala high, Sten added his raw, booming voice to the clamour. They had won. They had survived. The Qunari still stood, despite everything, unyielding and undaunted.

* * *

“Is there anything the qunari misses of its home?” Shale asked as the party tromped onward toward Denerim, away from Orzammar and Cadash Thaig.

“Very little,” Sten lied. “One land is much the same as any other.”

“Yours seem much drier than this Ferelden. And much less squishy.” The golem lifted one large foot disdainfully, flicking gobs of mud from between its toes. “There is nothing you wish in your possession from home?”

“My armour,” he mentioned, almost without thought. “Bas armour is ridiculous.”

Alistair whipped round like he’d been dirked in the bottom. “How can you say that? Our armour protects us from pointy things just fine, thank you very much.”

“Yours tends to a ridiculous waste of metal,” he countered firmly, staring pointedly at the filigree on Alistair’s breastplate. “Too much form. Not enough function. And restrictive of movement.” He understood the necessity of the full plate—darkspawn bites were  _not_ attractive or healthy, and their blood was sheer poison—but he felt his movements slow and ponderous within the heavy chainmail. Inefficient.

“You’re just sore because you’re not used to a full suit.”

“I am not  _sore_. I am weighed down. And I could beat you as easily out of this armour as within it.”

“Qunari fighting half-naked. Right, that’s an image I didn’t actually want. Shale? Hey, Shale, you have this funny look on your face.”

“ _Kadan?_ ”

“…I am fine, Qunari. Perfectly so.”


	10. J is for Jungle

He was Karasaad, newly-anointed and one of many. Together with his brothers, he was being thrown to the wolves—or as case might be, the cats.

They had marched with the soldier in charge of their training for the latter part of an evening now, the paved roads of Seheron giving way to dirt tracks, then trails overgrown by vines and then no trail at all. The air was dense and fresh and warm, and perfectly still. While it was hard to tell in the gloom of the thick jungle, he judged it to be just before sundown when Karashok finally called a halt, raising one hand.

“Here I will leave you,” he said in his patient, husky voice—a voice Karasaad knew could become a harsh and terrible bark when he gave commands. “Camp for the night here, young ones. Regroup at the western gates at noon tomorrow.”

Despite himself, Karasaad flinched. Here? Just them? All night? No karashok to oversee? Someone else behind him found their tongue first. “Karashok, what about the Tal-Vashoth?”

The old soldier’s face twisted in a lopsided smile, made so by the ragged scars crossing one cheek. “They will not come, little brother,” he chuckled, a little of that bark creeping into his words. “The snakes and jungle cats keep them away from this place.”

And then he was gone, swallowed up by the shadows around them as day swiftly turned to dusk. ”Now what do we do?” said the one who had asked about the Tal-Vashoth earlier, scratching his horns nervously.

“Surviving the night would be a start,” Karasaad replied, his voice coming out a lot more unsure than he’d hoped it would. The young ones were at the mercy of their world now, and very much alone.

* * *

They cut some vines down for water. That was the first and last thing that went smoothly. A fire was then attempted, but they only succeeded in scorching the tips of their fingers along with their insufficient kindling. It was almost dark by the time they succeeded—and even then, it was a wet, smoky thing that provided little in the way of heat. Karasaad regarded it with an unimpressed eye, scratching furiously and discreetly at a welt on his thigh. How the wild mosquitoes managed to bite through clothing, he had no idea.

And then they remembered what they had all forgotten, up to that very minute: food.

Scouring the immediate area—nobody wanted to venture far in the dark—garnered them a handful of ripe fruit. The two or three among them who were trained in the rogue’s arts built and set a few primitive lures. They caught an extremely poisonous jungle viper, a long gleaming thing like an Ariqun’s belt, three dusty lizards and a squirrel. They might have succeeded in snaring other game, but a juvenile monkey wandered into one of the lures. Its cries brought the rest of its troop, which destroyed their supply of traps. In a fit of pique, they threw stones; the monkeys pelted them all back, along with a barrage of pungent faeces.

Dinner was a quiet and miserable affair.

Ill-tempered, half-fed and slightly pungent, the small group sat around their smoky, sputtering fire. In the dim, flickering light of the flames, they all seemed more like strangers to each other than ever. Somewhere in the distance, a jungle cat yowled, and one of them yelped out a word any tamassran would have cuffed them for.

Karasaad felt himself very small indeed. Fear threatened to consume him, as did the darkness, but he was no longer  _imekari_. He was a Qunari with a soul and a purpose, and it would not do to run or cry. He felt nowhere as strong or capable as he had when the day first began. Why would the karashok fling them into a situation they didn’t know the first thing about, a situation they surely couldn’t—

“—handle on our own,” he murmured.

“Did you say something, brother?” asked the youth crouched next to him, his voice hushed.

“We can handle this,” he said, a little louder so that they could all hear. “Are we not of the  _antaam_? We are the body of the Qunari. The arm does not touch the fingers to burning coals without purpose.” He stood. He felt stronger when he stood. “We should set a watch tonight…in threes, so the others can rest. All of us need the rest.” He stood, touched his hand to Asala. “Who will take first watch with me?”

“I will,  _meraadan_ ,” the one sitting across him said, standing to meet his eye. He chuckled. “Better than sitting and waiting for a jaguar’s claws on our necks.”

“I’ll join you,” said another, slender-horned and long-limbed. “And I can make more lures. We will need to eat, tomorrow, if we must get back to the city by noon.”

“Second watch is mine, then—”

Gradually the silence that bound the Qunari dissolved, as one by one they assumed their roles, focused on surviving and acting rather than waiting in fear. Karasaad looked from face to face, recognising determination in their faces, if not courage.

He remained standing, keeping his first vigil over his sleeping brothers, weapon half-drawn as he scanned his surroundings. Accustomed to the dark now, it did not seem so foreboding, nor their fire so small. He was not afraid now. He had his strength to trust in—and that of eleven others, their breath peaceful, their sleep light but undisturbed. They were not defenseless boys to be picked off by the creatures of the night. They had to be men.

The crickets chirped. The nightbirds burbled quietly. All was at peace. Then the sounds abruptly stopped.

Karasaad looked up. Two eyes gleamed brilliant blue in the darkness. He looked right back, hissing “ _Saarenan_!” to his brothers as he drew his weapon. The beast stalked quietly forward, its fur as dark as a shadow, fangs gleaming whitely in a half-opened, deep pink mouth.

They regarded each other for some time: three half-grown boys, and a cat that could puncture their skulls. Karasaad’s hands trembled, but he did not let Asala fall from his grip. His lips curled back slightly, showing tightly gritted teeth. His heart pounded like a war-drum. Seconds oozed forward like hours. The large cat blinked at last, snuffled as if it weren’t interested in such tiny morsels  _anyway_ , and moved on.

“I guess it doesn’t like the smell of monkey droppings either,” the brother to his left said, the one gripping a shield in both hands. They started laughing, nearly loud enough to wake the others.

* * *

At precisely noon the next day, Karasaad and his brothers appeared before their Karashok. They had navigated by running water, the flight of birds, the moss on the trees. They smelled of leaves and mud and monkey droppings, and they were  _positively starving_ , but they were all accounted for—and in one piece.

“You have done well,” Karashok said, though his face retained its stony calmness. “Head to your quarters and get cleaned up, but first—you.” He nodded to Karasaad, standing in front of all his brothers. “Do you fear the jungle now, boy?”

“Yes, Karashok.”

“And do you wish to run from it?”

He replied, unflinchingly, “No, Karashok.”

The corner of the fighter’s lips curled upward. “Then you have begun to learn.”

Three days later, they trekked into a different part of the jungle, wilder and thicker than before. “You have before the hour of the snake tomorrow,” was all Karashok left them with. Mid-morning, this time.

They split up, wary but alert, to find running water and food and firewood. And Karasaad went to gather kindling—this time with a piece of flint tucked into his belt.


	11. K is for Kadan

Sten had no memories of the Warden fighting.

He remembered her standing before his cage with an unblinking stare one insipid Fereldan summer's evening (in Ferelden, nearly everything was insipid and cool and muddy), as he waited to die.

"I am Sten of the Beresaad," he told the unfamiliar dwarf.

"Pleased to meet you. Theramina Brosca," it replied, a name which he didn't understand, and then "Grey Warden," which he _did._

He remembered her watching him still over the fire, night after night. She spoke little, thankfully. At first, he thought it to be fear, which he'd expected. That, or distrust. Then, he mistook it for curiosity. It was only when Asala was safely at his side once more that he knew it for affection.

He remembered that when they spoke, one on one, she would look him unerringly in the eye. She took counsel with good grace. And usually, she went ahead and did whatever it was she had planned to do anyway. Often, her decisions were not wise—but they were not wholly unthinking. They were made with determination, and a desire to do the most right.

He remembered her speaking to her comrades: poking, prodding, encouraging, goading, asking all manner of questions. He remembered her sitting with Alistair by the fire,  _woman_ , blushing, regarding her fellow Warden with a quiet and easy adoration. He remembered her standing, in some way, for each and every one of them.

"You're all family," she said when he mentioned this. "Every last one of you. Until the end." He had felt a strange pride hearing her say this. The reason was not clear.

He remembered her standing before the villagers of Redcliffe in the light of day, her cheeks faintly pink and an uneasy smile pulling at the corners of her mouth as she realised that they had _survived_ , had saved everyone who could be saved; emerging from the dwarven assembly hall without a word, ignoring Leliana's queries about her sister; standing before the forces of Denerim as the Queen whipped them into a fury, her gaze calm, her face grim.

He remembered her sitting with him one last night before the final battle, watching him hone Asala for war and keeping the same vigil he did. She had stood alone at the end of the battle, sword and shield gripped in hands that should have been attuned to scroll or scales, and he remembered, too, the way she dropped her helm to the cracked stone.

He remembered her slow, grim smile, her high, raucous laugh, her rough voice shouting 'ebost issala' in a perfect facsimile of a Seheran accent. The way she looked him in the eye. The way she had not feared him.

("You don't look Zevran in the eye as much as you should," the senior Warden said one night as they sat by the fire, not long after the assassin joined them.

"I'd rather watch his hands," she'd replied. "I don't know what they might still be planning. But you—" She tapped his shoulder with the back of her fist. "— _you_ I can trust not to shank me in the back."

Sten overheard, and understood.)

In the antaam, all were told: Assume the enemy loves as you love, hates as you hate, and fights just as hard as you. It was a flat-out lie. The Warden loved and hated with such a ferocious singularity, it tore her apart before her time. But in that time, perhaps she had understood enough. Never would he regret knowing this strange _vashvaarad_ , and always would he bear her proud and passionate gaze where his heart lay.

No, Sten had no memories of the Warden fighting. The Hero of Ferelden was  _kadan_ ; that was all that needed remembering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Ebost issala_ \- return to dust


	12. L is for Lothering

He was ten days lost, and in chains. Three  _basvaarad_ of Lothering marched him toward the Chantry. He could easily have broken their steel-clad grip on his arms, snapped the rusty links that barely fit his wrists, run. He would have been free.

But he would also have been  _grey_ , and he submitted. One foot solemnly stepped before the other, then again, and again, as he continued to walk between them.

There was a crowd gathered to see the face of a farmhold's murderer. They had expected a stranger, a crazed loon, or even worse, one of their own. But _this_? They regarded him with shock and disgust and contempt.  _Qunari_ , someone murmured, and the whisper snaked quickly through the crowd. Probably the first any of them had seen, and with blood under his nails.

"Monster!" a girl screamed, her voice high and full of hate. He turned his head in her direction, in time for a stone to hurtle toward his forehead. The impact was sharp and hard, and he felt the skin split, his blood spill forth. She was almost as dark as a Chasind, her long, straight fringe falling across a brow contorted with rage. The scarf at her neck was as red as a flag of war. "What did she even do to you?! She was my  _friend! You killed her!_ "

 _Tell me something I do not know_ , he wanted to say, but the girl's companion pulled her away, and the _basvaarad_ jerked him forward. He swore the human was looking at him,  _studying_ him with fire-bright eyes.

The bleeding did not stop for a long while, and he left a little trail of dark blood all the way to the Chantry courtyard. The priestess came forth to pronounce his punishment--to cage him without food or water--and beseeched him to repent. He stared mutely at her, blood in his eye, until her lips pressed into a thin, pale line, and she gestured to the  _basvaarad_ to take him away.

The humans might judge him as they wished, but it was of no use. He had already judged himself.

* * *

He was twelve days lost. The villagers still stared, from up close or from a safe vantage point. A child, curious, came near him before sundown, babbling in a questioning tone. A frowzy human, perhaps a tamassran, grabbed it by the arm and dragged it away, pouring a cascade of shrill admonishment over it.

 _Stay away from that_ thing _. Stay away._

The cage was small and cramped, and barely wide enough for him to sit down in. So he stood, from sunrise to sundown.  He prayed aloud, preparing himself for death, though even that would be no absolution for what he had done.

When he closed his eyes, he dreamed of the farmers. Their arms, unsuited to hold weapons, which he broke and broke again; their throats, which he crushed in his bare hands until their blood ran over his knuckles; their crying and pleading, and the wail of a frightened child, and under it all the distant voice of a tamassran, saying  _this is what you protect, imekan. This._

He did not sleep.

* * *

He was seventeen days lost. The villagers grumbled less about the murderer and beast in their midst, and more about rumours of the Blight. Their armies gathered, apparently, at the edge of the Korcari Wilds, not very far south from where he is now. Days ago he saw the men of the village gather weapons and armour--pitiful and fragile, all of them--and leave for battle.

He prayed aloud, preparing himself for death.

The rumours flew fast and furious: that a darkspawn's blood was as poisonous as any serpent's venom, that there were huge, monstrous things among their ranks with grey skin and snaggle-teeth and curling, branching horns, like some misshapen stag. That they ate their opponents, or dragged them underground to communal larders. He didn't want to think too hard about that.

He looked to the sky most nights now, counting to himself, ticking off numbers on his fingers and toes, doing calculations. He watched the slow procession of stars across the sky, and searched for familiar patterns:  _Valokas, Abaneth, Ashkaari_. The Sword. The Ship. The Seeker of Truth. But his heart was darker than the sky, heavier than his chains. He could not find them.

* * *

He was twenty-four days lost. The village was quiet, with many of the young and able off to war. And defenceless, were he to give it some thought. The darkspawn, should they begin to head northward, would kill them all.

He prayed aloud, preparing himself for death.

The villagers continued to stare, but their looks had a kind of tired surprise to them.  _Why aren't you dead yet?_ is what such gazes asked him, and there was no answer that he could give them.

Strangers had begun to filter in among them from the southern land. All of them in flight from the darkspawn, bearing their lives in thin satchels, bundles and purses. All had a tale to tell.

The Chasind, too, reluctantly approached Lothering's borders, sullen and afraid. At night, he heard them tell stories: how the darkspawn marched on Ostagar, how the armies were torn apart, their monarch crushed like a fruit, the legendary Grey Wardens all killed. And the darkspawn feasting on blood-lust and flesh, marching ever onward to Lothering.

They roasted a bird and threw the bones in his cage. They made small plinking sounds against the metal. He heard snatches of their guttural tongue then, too. Their eyes, small and dark and wary, bored into him.

"Who's that brute over there?"

"The villagers say a farmhold found it half-dead and patched it up--and then it killed them all. Let it be."

He was a thing, then. An _it_. Fitting.

He slept with his eyes open and sometimes with them closed, images floating around him of faces and places he had known and ones his mind was cobbling together out of fatigue, and he drifted in and out of consciousness until the cage felt like another dream too.

Once, almost, he felt ready to step out of his own body and leave it behind, but he shivered from head to toe and--he was awake, his mouth dry, his lips cracked, the dew upon his bare skin. Shivering, he rose to his feet for another day.

* * *

He was thirty days lost. The sun was scant light and even scanter heat. The end, he felt, was close.

He prayed aloud, preparing himself for death.

There was a small tumult of sound behind him. It sounded like two of the Chasind who had run to Lothering for shelter. Leave them. They were of no concern.

Footsteps approached. Two pairs heavy and armoured. One pair soft and light. One pair...two pairs of animal paws. He looked down. A dwarf looked up at him, almost curiously. It bore sword and shield and ill-fitting armour, and stood there with three others: a male human, a large dog slathered in blood and paint, and a creature who could be nothing but  _bas saarebas_ , more unfettered than most and looking at him with a decidedly hungry bent. He blinked. They didn't go away. They were not illusions, then.

 _Kost_ , he was tired of all the staring.

"Hello," the dwarf said.

"You aren't one of my captors," the Sten of the Beresaad replied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My canon Hawke siblings are quite dark-skinned.
> 
> Sten is looking for what a Terran might call Crux, Carina and Centaurus, respectively.


	13. M is for Mage

He was _imekari_ , just shy of his tenth year, and despite the aloe bandage on his arm, it still stung.

There was an arvaarad already sitting and waiting for his turn at the physician's station. Not the same one that had put chains on his brother and removed him from their midst, but an arvaarad all the same: a man with a slotted helmet in his lap who smelled of sweat and steel and the sharp, too-fresh tang of _lehraan_ and second-hand magic _._ He nodded a quiet greeting as the boy sat down a short distance away.

"Interesting place for a burn," he said, directly. "You were playing with fire?"

"I was sparring," the boy replied a little stiffly. "My friend is a mage," he wanted to say, but the words stuck in his craw. He finally settled on "My friend became dangerous."  _Saarebas._ Not a person--a _thing_.

The arvaarad aah-ed a little in understanding. "Judging from that look on your face, you did not expect it of him."

"He was one of us!" The words were hot and angry.

"Young one, he still is. Even the _saarebas_ has its purpose. And if he is wise, then he has enough to fear without your own adding to it."

The _imekari_ remembered that part well enough. The creche had pulled them apart--or rather, as a single body they had yanked him away from his brother. The mage new-formed did not move from his spot, had submitted to the arvaarad--but under the heavy chains the boy had seen his burned hands tremble, clenched in small tight fists, holding back pain and blisters and a sudden, terrible power.

"What happens to him now?" he asked, more quietly.

"He will be trained to control his affliction," was the reply. "His arvaarad will see that it is done. A  _saarebas_ ' magic costs it much, young one. It will never be safe again, not to the end of his days. His arvaarad must shepherd it, to make sure its chains remain where they must. But even such a one can still serve the Qun, for as long as it is able. We will fight the _bas_ with their own fire--and may they choke on it," he finished vehemently.

"Arvaarad of the 37th karataam!" one of the karasena called out.

"He is here." The man stood up, favouring one leg a little as he did. He patted his little brother's shoulder, taking care to avoid the tightly bandaged patch of skin. "Perhaps one day, you will understand. The Qun's demands are shouldered by those capable of bearing them."

The thought occupied the _imekari_ 's head all day, even as his name was called and his dressings were changed and more aloe paste was slathered across a still-livid mark on his arm. But he spoke no more of a friend lost.

* * *

He was Karasten and sixteen years grown before he _did_ understand.

They were fighting to reclaim a certain village from Tevinter hands, and he stood on the frontlines along with the Beresaad and, that day, the 37th karataam. Karasten had heard the arvaarad was stricter than most, yet it was a kindness; his pack was well-trained and he had not lost a single one to demons. Perhaps it was luck. Perhaps it was skill.

One of those saarebas stood next to him now, raw-boned and long-limbed much the same way he was. It looked like any other: a long, tumbaga-plated mask hid its features, for a thing needs no face and certainly not one a demon might recognise. Said mask was looped around horns both blunted and bound, because a dangerous thing is dangerous enough without the curving, deadly weapons. He knew that behind it, there would be loose, dark stitches across its lips, for words, too, could prove weapons more deadly than steel. A heavy collar and set of chains linked mage to mage to arvaarad, standing with his control rod ready. Its hands were still heavily shackled.

But there, on the inside of one elbow, Karasten saw something that might have been a familiar birthmark, remembered from days sparring and running together, listening to a tamassran's tales, writing on clay before a karalat. Or perhaps it was a smudge of dirt.

The mage canted his head at Karasten, and made a small movement with his head, the ring on his mask clanking once, sharply. Perhaps it was a nervous tic. Or perhaps it was a nod of recognition. 

 _Karasten. Saarebas._ Both were named. Both had purpose. Both were Qunari.

And then the Sten's voice rang out, and the time of thinking was over.

* * *

Sten wasn't sure why he'd agreed to come with the Warden to the Circle. Perhaps, he thought as the tiny craft skimmed the cold, unnaturally dark waters of Lake Calenhad, deep down he'd wanted to see for himself the chaos that the  _bas_ left their mages to, uncollared and unchained. And it _was_ chaos.

The  _basvaarad_ \--the Templars who still stood were few, and even then many of those were wounded or wrecked beyond recovery. Somewhere beyond, the floor crawled with demons and abominations, things the Qunari had only heard of but had never seen for himself.

It was a cruelty to the _bas saarebas_ , unwitting as it was. To leave them so open to attack, so uncertain, in the name of freedom, made Sten shake his head in disgust.

"This is why we cut the tongues from mages," he muttered quietly as they stepped toward the great doors that the Templars would soon shut behind them.

The Warden shot him an incredulous, disapproving look, but she did not know. She could not. "No time for that now, Sten. Let's move on."


	14. N is for Nightmare

The air smelled different when he opened his eyes and rose: less blood and corruption, and more salted fish and still water, with an undertone of  _lehraan_. It was dry and cool and _heavy_ , bending everything seen through it.

Dry grass prickled the bare skin of his back. Above him was Fereldan sky. Before him was the mirror of the lake the  _bas_ called Calenhad.

"And you're awake!" a familiar voice hailed him. In Qunlat. He turned to see Karashok looking at him from across the campfire, and Ashaad poking at the tinder while cursing under his breath. "Sit by the fire and warm yourself before first watch, _meraadan_. You slept like a log."

 _Ah._ Now he understood.

But where were the others--no, he remembered now. Gathering firewood and herbs, hunting food, searching for water that  _didn't_ taste of  _lehraan_. Good luck with that.

Sten sat by the fire in silence, trying to glean heat from the slender flames with minimal success. Karashok and Ashaad sniped gently at each other, speaking of everything but home. He let them. They had to have, at least, the confidence that they would return to Seheron's shores.

He knew not if it took minutes, or hours, or days until the Warden showed up, as he had known she would eventually. " _Shanedan_ ," he greeted her, his native language rolling easily from his tongue as it had not done for months.

"Who are you talking to?" Karashok asked, switching to Common and looking to the sudden intruder. The Warden looked quizzically back at him, then at Sten again, brows furrowed in confusion. When he met her gaze, the world rapidly began flaking away behind her, like old paint, and he saw flashes of grey-brown not-stone and a misty, roiling not-sky around them. Even the Karashok seemed to warp.

" _Parshaara_! We have a guest. Make room at the fire," he said to his men nevertheless. He knew that he was only seeing what he wanted to see. He knew that it was nothing but a dream.

But so help him, it was a good dream.

* * *

"What did you see in the Fade?" Sten asked the Warden, once everyone was safely out and the crisis had been quelled, if not simply delayed and denied. The  _bas saarebas_ Wynne had joined them in leaving the Circle. Having his wounds healed by magic-- _skilled_ magic, almost not bound to the land--was disturbing.

"Talking rats," she replied, tilting her head back as if to let her thoughts settle and collect. "And a bunch of really weird statues. Chairs and cupboards floating in the air, that made no sense at all. Oh, in your nightmare there were two more honking great Qunari."

"What did they look like?" His voice had taken on a hard note of urgency.

"What did they...? Well--like you, actually."

"In every detail?"

"Except for the noses, kind of--" Her eyes widened and she became still as her thoughts came together in realisation. "Oh."

"My kind usually have horns, Warden." He tossed another bundle of fuel into the fire, pleased that the light and heat here, at least, was real.

"Hey, cut me some slack here! You're the only Qunari I've ever seen. All that shit in the Fade is confusing," she winced. "So." She raised her hand, fingers waggling in the vicinity of her temples. "Where'd yours go?"

"They never went anywhere." The warm, flickering light almost made him look like he was smiling.

"Hm," she responded thoughtfully. They returned to gazing out across the darkness in silence for some time after that. " _Karashok_.  _Ashaad_." Strange, to hear the Warden speak of the dead. "You wanna talk about them, Sten?"

"I have said enough. To do more would be to invite them into nightmares again."

"Yeah, I get that. You know, you never asked me what I saw in _my_ nightmare."

"There was no need to."

Here she chuckled. "I figured. But you know, I don't think the demon even did any decent research." Her eyes took on a distant look, the look she got whenever any of them spoke of  _family_ or  _home_ , but she blinked and it was gone again.

They spoke no more and the watch ended uneventfully. Sten slept very little afterwards, the images of the Fade dream still fresh within his mind. Dreams would disappear. But nightmares of losing the  _beresaad,_  and seeing them as they were on their last night alive,would take a little longer.


	15. O is for Ogre

The beast that ambushed them in Cadash Thaig was  _huge_ : all bunched muscle and unnatural, purple-grey skin, spittle drooling from jaws packed with far too many teeth for comfort. Most impressive were the branched, curling horns: wild, untrimmed things thicker around than a man's arm and with enough bulk to pulverise every bone in a man's body.

He wasn't going to give it that chance.

The ogre thundered forward, its feet pounding the stone. As it swiped at him, Sten ducked, the after-breeze skimming the top of his braids. Its ragged talons were stained with substances best not thought about. He smashed Asala's flat into its knees. It staggered. He leaped.

His sword punched through the leathery hide, grating across and between bone and ligament to where any untainted creature might once have had a heart. The sheer force of his attack sent the beast sprawling backwards, blood splashing everywhere. Wasting no time, Sten heaved Asala free and drove her home through the centre of its skull with both hands, ignoring its shriek of pain. And twisted.

With a jerk and a shudder, the ogre fell limp to the ground. Its eyes clouded, and with a final spasm it lay still at last, sticky, dark ichor dyeing the moss and lichen below it. Sten pulled Asala out of the gore and stepped away, dashing a thin film of sweat from his brow, but—he couldn't help feeling uneasy. Something did not seem _right_ about this creature. The sheer difference in size from other darkspawn he'd seen, the bulk, the horns, an odd and niggling sensation of familiarity...

A vision of the Arishok, crowned with age and virility, flashed before his eyes.  _The horns._

"Whoa whoa whoa,  _Sten_. You've gone all pale. Wynne, could you give him a—"

"I'm fine, Warden," he lied through his teeth, suddenly unable to meet her concerned eye or the golem's questioning gaze. The way his head was reeling had nothing to do with his wounds, nor the stench of blood and death all around them. "There may be darkspawn still in hiding. I will scout ahead." All of a sudden he wanted nothing more to do with the whole tableau. Sten strode across the moss-covered bridge, past the rest of the party and the corpse born of a sister he never knew.

* * *

It was a troubling thought, to say the least: that darkspawn had been taking Qunari. His people, or those who once were. How many ogres were brutishly stumbling about Ferelden? His mind flashed briefly back to Lothering, and the girl with the dark hair and red scarf. The village had long since fallen. Perhaps such a beast had crushed the life from her in the offing.

Had the darkspawn waited, under earth and stone and salt water, for someone to cross their path? Had they hunted the women whose names had passed into obsolence within Sten's mind, the ones they could never find? Had they dragged them under the ground and—

He almost couldn't think about it.

"Broodmothers," the Warden had said with a distasteful shudder when the subject came up. For whatever reason, she had charged him with keeping the party in order while she, the golem, the drunk dwarf and the old mage had descended into the Deep Roads. He had not seen these creatures she spoke of. "That's where they come from. That's what happens when they take women." Her fists trembled within her gauntlets. "They change them into abominations...no, they're too far gone from that. They're—"

"Tits," belched the dwarf, now as much an outcast as she was. "Tits every-sodding-where."

The Warden flinched. "Yeah, thanks, Oghren," she said in a tone that intimated that she was  _not_ thankful. "Seeing one once is once too many."

And that struck a chord somewhere within him. They had taken non-combatants, women and girls, and corrupted them beyond measure.

Those that had brought forth ogres were beyond his grasp. But something else was not. Not just yet.

* * *

The thunder of heavy feet was familiar by now; the full force of the horde bore upon Denerim, led by the heavy, horned hulks. They found Sten waiting, beside the detestable Grey Warden; both lifted their weapons, and charged their enemy.

With the ogres, he was not fighting to merely kill. He would release his sisters' sons from their corruption. As was his duty.


	16. P is for Paint

"I was looking for kaddis for Gelert, I swear. _Stone_ , man, stop looking at me like that." The Warden was looking everywhere but into Sten's accusing gaze, and the bard quietly giggled off to one side.

"There is more of the  _ashkaari_ within you yet, _kadan_ , to find this in a Denerim market," he said while turning the jar in his hands. Its stone was smooth and cool under his fingertips, just as when he'd plucked it out of her curious hands before a market stall. A quick peek under the lid and a sniff of the contents had confirmed his suspicions. Warpaint, not kaddis—and _Qunari_ warpaint.

"I thought it was rouge at first," Leliana said, which earned her a long, very unimpressed glare. "In Orlais, the nobles paint themselves with bright colours, under their masks. It highlights their current allegiances—and the beauty of their faces."

"This is no frivolous decoration." He shook the jar in the bard's direction. "Warpaint is the sign of a soldier duty-bound."

"But you didn't have any on, in Lothering."

"Yes."

The Warden furrowed her brow lightly at her companion. "Is that stuff still usable, _kadan_?"

Sten looked into the container, half-filled as it was with a dark red paste he knew would dry a brilliant scarlet on the skin. "Enough remains for one application."

"Just one?"

"Only death or victory permits us to wash it off. It will suffice."

The Warden leaned back, chuckling. "I don't doubt it one bit. But rest well tonight, everyone. We have a Landsmeet to interrupt tomorrow."

* * *

Just before the final march, Sten painted himself for war. With every stroke he laid down, he felt something at his core grow still, marshalling its strength. The feeling was not new, but it was one he'd missed: this quiet, waiting energy, bolstered by the feather's weight of the cool, bright dye on his skin. It was the weight of your brothers' blood, and the weight of your duty, and knowing that you were not alone in your battles. Under the red, all scars old and new disappeared. Blood was just another wetness. Old wounds closed. Painted from head to toe, every soldier was as clean-skinned as the day he was assigned to the  _antaam_.

The farmers had not known this. When he regained his senses in the farmhouse, they had scrubbed him clean of both blood and promise. They hadn't known. It didn't excuse what he had done next—it never would—but still, they hadn't known.

There wasn't enough to complete the pattern on his face, but for now it would be sufficient. Sten scraped the last of the warpaint out of the jar and drew two last, bold lines over his shoulders. That was when the Warden walked in. He heard her breath catch, and the sound of quick steps staggering back over the doorway behind him.

" _Kadan,_ " he said, turning to face her.

"I—er. Sten. Morning." Awe tinged with fear flickered in her eyes. No other living creature in Ferelden had seen him like this, boldly emblazoned from neck to navel. "The army is on the move. I need you out there."

"As you wish." He buckled on his suit of plate, his touch surer and quicker somehow upon the straps and metal.  _Bas_ armour might cover it. Blood and bile might drown it. The Archdemon might flay it from his skin, and his skin from his flesh. But the Sten of the Beresaad knew without doubt he bore physical proof of a covenant, of a task begun long ago.

Today, at last, the Qun would see it completed.


	17. Q is for Qunlat

He was thirty days uncaged; a day for each of the darkspawn that had ambushed the party. The Warden cursed continually to herself, a muted river of words babbling forth from her lips as she swung blade and sword fiercely (if clumsily) at the melee. With him and the bard on one side of her, the templar and the mage on the other, the golem pounding its way forward  _and_ the war-dog snapping and snarling between them, they were just about holding their own. Just about.

Almost too late he saw the creeping figure and its familiar spiky hood. He felt the twitch of energy disturbed as the darkspawn started to cast. A cold vision flared brightly at the back of his head: Ashaad, falling, outlined with a sickly green fire—and the wide, vindictive rictus of the one responsible looming in the half-light.

" _Teth a! Saarebas!_ " he barked, before he could stop himself.

The Warden whipped round at the urgent sound of his voice, and reacted—but the dog was even faster. Blunt head down and ears pinned back, he slammed into the vile creature. The force knocked it off its feet, and the Warden's sword kept it there. Permanently. She glanced toward him, confused but grateful, before focusing on the battle once more.

Minutes crawled like hours, but soon the field was littered with the darkspawn's ghastly corpses. Their small party had survived. For now. The mage tended to the more serious of their wounds, grumbling all the while. The Warden staggered over to a convenient grassy knoll, her feet giving way under her and a great sigh whooshing out of her mouth. Toward her trotted the wardog, who nosed her side with a concern whine.

"Good boy, Gelert," the Warden said, panting for breath and spitting foul black blood out of her mouth. "Sten, what was that you yelled just now?"

"A caution," he said. Well, he wasn't _lying_. "To look out for the darkspawn mage."

"It sounded like no tongue I've heard," their unfettered mage said coolly.  "Perhaps it was the Qunari tongue?"

 _Vashedan saarebas_ , Sten thought, then checked himself, swatting aside the familiar words for the tongue of the  _bas_.  _Damned mage_. "You heard nothing," he said curtly, and spoke no more for the rest of the day. Undaunted, the Warden continued to train a shrewd eye on him.

He rather wished she wouldn't.

* * *

He was almost a hundred days uncaged now. Most days, fewer words than that crossed his lips. As a rule, Sten tended to keep to himself, speaking only when spoken to or when the utter pointlessness of a situation compelled him to give voice. Even then he limited himself to Common; the sounds of Qunlat only reminded him of home and what he had surely lost forever.

But sometimes in battle he could not help himself, and the familiar, sharp invective came to his tongue as easily as his arms swung a blade. Before darkspawn and dragons and werewolves, he loosened the knots behind his tongue and teeth and let the familiar words pour over them. They were not likely to carry tales; his speech was buried with their bones.

But then they had gone off on some pointless jaunt to raise coin, tracking down a deserter by the lake called Calenhad. The human had not been unprepared; the party was attacked by a slew of thugs. Sten's thunderous battle cry was suddenly echoed loudly behind him: consonants like small grenades, vowels sharp and clear. The sound of it sent a spike of surprised pain shooting through his heart. But it was a  _woman_ 's voice calling out, rough and bloody and ringing with his own accent.

Of course it had to be the blasted Warden.

"You speak my people's tongue," he said as the party made camp with the sunset. It wasn't a question.

"Only what I hear from you," she said cheerfully, hammering a tent peg into the soft ground.

The face he made was best described as perplexed. "You heard—"

"Stone's blood, of course I heard," she groaned as she fixed him with a withering gaze the kithshoks would be proud of. "None of us exactly _whisper_ in the thick of battle. And hey, I guessed you needed some company. So." She turned away from her work, rubbing the mud off her palms. "What does that bit mean, anyway?  _Ebost issala_." There. Again. _His_ accent, coming out of _her_ mouth.

A muscle in his jaw worked as he considered whether to tell her. Or why he should. Surely she could see it, even in the fading light. "Nothing special," he finally volunteered, handing her another tent peg.

"All right," she said, dragging out the last word in a way that spoke volumes of how convinced she wasn't. "What about that one time, what was it, um... _tet a_?"

" _Teth_ _a._ " Just in case he slipped again—Ferelden's corruption was beginning to grind on him, on his control. "It means _be wary._ "

"And all the stuff that came after that?"

"Another time, Warden."

"Still not in the mood to talk, huh?"

"No. You tend to speak enough for all of us." She only sniggered in response.

So much for that approach.

* * *

Asala's steel, newly reclaimed, rang against its corrupted brother as Sten beat back the armoured darkspawn intent on carving them all into digestible chunks. This one was a formidable foe; the party could not afford its continued presence.

But somehow he let his guard down. Somehow the hurlock scored a lucky strike, its eyes gleaming madly behind the slots of its helmet. Somehow the heavy pommel of its axe crashed into his temple, knocking every coherent thought out of his head. Sten staggered. His vision swam. His skull rang like a thousand war drums. The roar of the battlefield was overlaid by a murky buzz of sounds, hard and soft, that meant nothing at all. He shook his head, trying to clear it, to stop the infernal fuzz of his thoughts. Nothing made sense. Nothing—

—until loud, familiar words cut through the fog like so many knives. "STEN! TETH A! BAS! _BAAAAS_!"

Instinct alone propelled him. Sten lashed out, swinging his sword in a wide, half-blind circle. A surprised, sputtering gargle told him his blade had found a mark. His assailant, the hurlock with its heavy axe, slid off the tip of his sword and thudded to the ground where it stood, just behind him. More enemies of lesser rank surged forward, but his sight and mind were clearer now. Pushing back the last shreds of dizziness and shaking the blood from his eye, he cut them down with a few swift strokes, every nerve a-tingle. A length of blue-veined steel ripped through the chest of a scrambling genlock. It fell forward as the Warden pulled her blade from its chest.

"Thank you," he said, and was relieved to find his brain had pulled itself together enough to respond in the common tongue. Not Qunlat.

The Warden just grinned, one hand over her bloodied nose. "And you thought it wasn't worth telling me anything," she said with a chuckle.

* * *

"A _sal-_ a?" the Warden asked some nights later, having watched him carry on an entire straightforward conversation with the dog. He alone knew what it was like to have a weapon that was wholly a part of you.

" _Ah_ -sala," Sten corrected her gently. She was getting better at it. She was also the only one. While it was strange beyond reason to hear his people's tongue from a _bas_ mouth, now it was also somewhat comforting. He almost...enjoyed it. That someone else knew the way lips, tongue, teeth and throat worked together to form sounds and syllables from a far-away island? That was a simple pleasure in itself.

"How _do_ you say 'thank you', anyway, in your lands?" she asked, folding both hands around one knee. Her gaze was more keen interest now than plain curiosity.

Sten drew his soul and proceeded to polish some flecks of blood from her gleaming blade. "I find it better to show thanks rather than speak them, _kadan._ "


	18. R is for Remain

Sten stood alone, blind and broken in the darkness. Blood—his own, his enemies', his brothers'—ran down his chest, cold and foul and sticky against his skin. The faint rasp of his breath and the cold clouds of mist in the air lulled him into something close to a trance.

He winced and shook his heavy head. He couldn't afford it. He couldn't fall. Behind his eyes lurked images that would sear themselves on the inside of his skull, given a chance.

Karasaad had fallen first on Lake Calenhad's shores that night. Even as Sten had shouted out a call to arms, drawing Asala as he gained his feet, the darkspawn had ambushed them from all points of the compass. From the air. From the ground. From within their very midst. A swirl of smoke and shadow coalesced into a hideous, fanged creature that sliced the man's spine open like a fruit. He was young, barely grown into manhood. The only mercy was that the end was quick.

The darkspawn had poured down upon them, their faces lit with twisted glee. Outnumbered they may have been, but the Beresaad was far from defenceless. Vashaad's twin daggers flashed silver-red-black-silver, quick as a hurricane and deadly as a snake. Karashok and Ashaad wielded arms with dexterity and tightly-grit teeth. Vaarad, as ever, was their wall: standing firm with his shield and sword, crushing skulls and severing limbs without a breath spare to even curse. Karasten was by Sten's shoulder, swinging a mighty axe notched and marked with years of battle. Asala's blade flowed black with the noxious blood of their foes.

Yet one by one, they had all fallen, even as the darkspawn did.

(He’s a sitting target here. Sten tries to walk away, to find shelter, anything but remain in the open where any kabethari with half a mind could cut his throat. But his legs will not hold him, and he falls to his knees. His boots slosh faintly with blood.)

Kataari, old, silent and implacable, had shot arrow after bright arrow into eye sockets and braincases. He fired until there was nothing more to fire, then carved his way through a circle of darkspawn with his small knife. When one of them bit his throat out, he sunk that same blade under its jaw, tearing the beast's neck to shreds.

Magic entered the fray then; foul and stinking magic, even by Qunari standards. Ashaad shrugged off the first two bolts, but could not handle the cursed fog that choked him after. He gargled out a blood-soaked curse as one of the creatures hamstrung him and a final, vicious bolt tore the breath from his body. They afforded him no time to read from the Prayers for the Dead, none to even blink.

Vashaad lobbed grenades into the fray, almost praying that the gaatlok had not been touched by Ferelden's cold and damp. He vented his ire upon their foes with blades and fire, until a bowstring's vengeful hum sealed his doom. Rusty arrows porcupined his neck and chest as he crumpled to the dirt.

Karashok's head parted way with his body under the hands of the darkspawn, even as his brothers tried to hack him free. Something or someone knocked Sten's helmet from his head. Tepid blood splattered his abused armour and he nearly froze, _nearly_ , as the enemy brandished their bloody prize.

(Sten spits a wad of bloody, thick saliva from his mouth, grimacing as he remembers the _sound_ it made, the screaming, the parting of flesh from flesh. He would vomit, but there's nothing to bring up except memories and more blood.)

Vaarad defended the remaining men valiantly, though his arms and stomach were already furrowed by foul claws and his eyes half-blind with blood and dirt. The darkspawn surged upon him. He withstood it, bravely, for a while. But every wall has an onslaught they cannot stand, and he staggered. Slipped. Was pounced upon. Sten did not see his face, only heard the sharp crack of bones breaking.

(He blinks, and behind his eyelids is a boy, raw-boned, long-limbed, clutching his shield in both hands within the jungle and joking about the smell of monkey droppings. He can almost touch him...)

Sten's own body was being torn to shreds. He knew it. But he swung Asala over and over, cut for cut, wound for wound. The blood pounded in his veins, his breath a rush between his ears. He was a man completely lost to battle-rage; he was also beyond caring.

(He can't stay here. A groan flickers past Sten's gritted teeth as he forces himself upright. His armour is badly cracked. By the feel of it, so are several of his bones. He can't see his helmet for the darkness, or the slurry of meat and mud upon the ground. The air stinks of corruption and death.)

Suddenly, there were just ten darkspawn. Five. One. None. Corpses littered the battlefield, and somewhere in the dark mess of flesh and blood were seven Qunari, mauled nearly beyond recognition. Karasten lay face up by one of his feet, his throat cut nearly clean through, his eyes open and unseeing. 

And Sten stood alone by the water, blood running down his chest, struggling for breath and a last spark of consciousness. He staggered. Caught himself. Rose with every inch of him awash in pain, leaning his weight on his sword. Walked a step, two, five, six. He called seven names. Not a one answered.

The last remaining man of the Beresaad fell. And as the final shred of his consciousness faded, his fingers slipped from Asala's hilt.

* * *

Hours later, the farmers find him, a brown giant of a man stripped to his smalls and palms bare to the sky.

Days after that, Sten wakes in a strange bed with his wounds tended to. "Da!" the small human imekari crouched by his side yells shrilly. He winces as his eardrums hum with the aftershock. "He's woken up!"

This 'Da' prods him gently, checking to see if his wounds have knit under the rough herbal poultices and coarse bandages. Another woman appears behind him, apparently interrupted in the middle of cooking something beige and lumpy, if her wooden spoon is any indication. He will have none of it. "My sword," he says thickly. It takes the look of confusion on the basra's faces to realise he has spoken in Qunlat.

He is soulless, and ten minutes from becoming truly lost.

Sten's heart beats hard and hopelessly under his skin. "My sword," he repeats himself more firmly, pushing himself upright and looking around. One of his scabbed-over injuries splits and bleeds afresh at the exertion. "Where is it?"


	19. S is for (Shooting) Stars

"It's full of stars!" the bard exclaimed, with a fervour she normally reserved for her  _hissra_ and frivolous footwear.

Pointedly ignoring her, Sten tilted his head upward to the heavens. The night sky bore only a near-invisible sliver of moon, and was garlanded with a million tiny points of light in patterns both familiar and not. How long had it been since he had seen those same shapes in Seheron's skies, with the warm sea breeze in his hair and the sounds and smells of his home putting itself to sleep all around him?

He hadn't realised how homesick he was until that moment.

"Y-you don't have to shout, Leliana," the Warden said with a shiver, eyes firmly fixed on the campfire gradually crackling to life between her and the assassin's ministrations. Morrigan had made her own fire and retired early for the night. So much the better; he did not desire her mixing with the others more than necessary. The dwarf pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders, shaking off a few more flakes of snow. "We all know there's something up there."

"People do not fall upwards into the sky,  _kadan_ ," Sten grumbled.

"Yet," she said, raising one ironclad finger. "Nobody's fallen into it  _yet._ Surface folk are weird," the Warden scoffed softly, standing up from tending the flames. "Finding your way by lights in the ceiling. The idea of it."

"I find humans have strange ideas if left to their own devices," said the golem, glaring daggers at the owl looking over their camp and flexing her fingers in most threatening ways. "Mages most of all, but all men are prone to...interesting theories."

Alistair pulled a loaf of bread from their supplies, tearing it in half and passing the Warden the larger part of it as he spoke.  "It's not really a theory at this point. Sailors and traders have been crossing the seas with them for years and years. But no matter where they go, they can always count on the Maker's Cross and the Eye to point south."

It was Sten's turn to scoff, but mostly to himself. A sword was a sword was a sword, even as a sky-picture. It didn't need any  _hissra_ tacked on to make it legitimate. But there it was, shining in the sky: the patterns any Qunari traveller knew as  _Valokas_ , four gleaming points with its brightest pointing the way southward.

"Up there is the Chevalier," Leliana added helpfully, tracing a path between the points of light miles above them.  _Ashkaari_ , Sten thought to himself. Seeker of Truth.

"You mean the Knight," Alistair said with a full mouth.

"The Knight _is_ the Chevalier. I was still raised in Orlais, Alistair. Those were the names I grew up on," she added in response to the appalled gaze he turned on her. It reminded Sten of a wounded puppy.

"Hey. _Hey!_ " The drunken dwarf's rough, panicked voice suddenly rang out. "Are they supposed to fall out of the sky like that?! There! Another one!"

"You have never seen shooting stars, Oghren?" Zevran said with a low chuckle, looking up from the simmering cooking pot. Spiking everything with peppers, no doubt. "Do not worry; there are plenty more where they came from."

"I don't give a nug's nethers about that. I _do_ care if they fall on my head!"

"Hate to say it, but he's got a point." The Warden nestled up against Alistair, fitting with an odd neatness under his arm. "Doesn't anyone get beaned on the head with one of those?"

"They are points of light and fire," Sten said, his patience nearing its end. "None have perished from being struck by them, and I do not understand where beans come into the picture. Even if you are hungry."

"It's an expression, Sten," said the old mage, looking up from the ragged sock she was darning. "The Chantry says that shooting stars are the tears wept by Andraste as she looks down upon the world. People make wishes on them."

"You ever tried it, Wynne?"

"Oh, many times when I was younger, Warden."

"...and did it ever work?"

"Perhaps only once. But it's that once that keeps us trying."

Another spark of light careered through the darkness. "I wish for my sister's safety," the Warden promptly said. Clearly Orzammar was still on her mind, for whatever reason.

"I thought you'd ask for the Blight to end, love," joked Alistair.

"Oh, we can end the Blight ourselves, no problem. But nobody's looking out for my family," she replied with calculated evenness, crossing her arms without even a glance at him. He took the hint and fell blessedly silent.

"I don't think I recognise that one," Leliana mused, her fingers tracing a long, careful line at something in the sky.

"Then I'll name it for ya.  _Broodmother's Tits_."

" _Oghren_."

" _Ataashi_ ," Sten said shortly.

"Put on a cloak, big guy," the Warden responded, in all seriousness.

"The constellation the bard seeks. On Seheron, it is called _Ataashi_. The Dragon, in your tongue."

"Ah, now this is a name I have heard also. In your lands, the Cross is also called the Sword, is it not?"

"It is what it is, elf."

"They're still the same stars," the Warden grumbled, scrubbing the heel of her hand over her eyes. "Who's taking first watch tonight?"

Sten was, and he did his customary duty in silence, with a hundred nameless points of light tumbling brightly toward the horizon. Above him sailed the Sword and the Dragon, the Seeker and the Ship. Still the same stars. Different names, but still the same stars.

When the hundred and first shooting star passed by, he made a wish under his breath.


	20. T is for Tamassran

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Women are priests, artisans, shopkeepers or farmers. They don't fight."

He was imekari, all of ten namedays, and she was the first and best light of his world. The tamassran in her yellow robes was gentle and kind and all good things to her charges, and possessed that rare and luminous quality of making every child under her tutelage feel that he or she was best-loved among their brethren.

The imekari knew it for a lie. Clearly she gave  _him_  that honour.

"One day, dear hearts," she said to them, "you will all make fine Qunari." They were seated in the shade of the qunlok courtyard with their books, taking advantage of the balmy weather. "But remember, a blade is not forged only to attack. It must also protect."

"Protect, tamassran?" someone asked.

"From the greatest to the least of us. Our brothers and sisters in the Qun all depend on our strength and skill," she continued, smiling at her students, "as much as we do on theirs. Tell me, have any of you seen Seheron from the watchtower?"

The children exchanged a few sidelong glances. "We're not allowed up in the watchtower," the imekari volunteered at length.

"That will have to change," she said, rising to her feet. "Come with me."

The group walked through temple corridors striped with shadow and light, up and past libraries and scribe quarters and ash-flecked mourning walls, and finally into a torch-lit stairwell spiraling ever upward. A few of his siblings blanched at the height, but they pressed on, nevertheless. The tamassran wouldn't lead them into danger.

She led them, instead, past ashaad standing along the walls and toward the greatest view of the city they'd ever seen.

He had always known Seheron was huge, though still smaller now than during his earliest memories. But up here, it spread as far as the eye could see. Below them lay the unerringly straight streets of Seheron, filled with people and lined with buildings of scarred stone and carved wood. Beyond the city walls were smaller towns, spots of beige and white and grey within the island green, the farmers' hill villages, and further away still, the jungles of Seheron, bounty and danger both. He looked all around him in awe, his breath held back somewhere between his chest and throat.

"This is what you protect, imekan," she said softly, her eyes aglow with pride. She spread her palms wide as they looked over all they called home. "This is what we belong to—and what belongs to us."

* * *

Not two weeks after that day, Tevinter forces breached the city.

When the horns sounded, the priests fanned out to gather the young, old and infirm, to usher them to safety. They had done it for years before, and would likely do so for years after. It was an unfortunate art, but needed. Even more so when one of the priestesses ran to her sisters, robes in disarray and her hair wild around her pointed ears.

" _Kadanra_ , a _bas saarebas_  has breached the qunlok doors. The antaam has been alerted, but if the mage breaks through here before they arrive—"

"—then we will keep our own safe until they do." It was Qunra who spoke, one of the priestesses second only to the Ariqun; Qunra of the deep, hard eyes and the white ribbons round her horns. "Sisters, take up arms. Gather furniture for barricades."

"Tamassran, come with us!" the imekari blurted out as the children were ushered away, the words coming from a place he did not know.

"Not today, little one," his teacher said. She tore the sleeves from her robe, shredding the loose stitches and binding the fabric around her bare forearms. "Seek shelter with the others."

"But women don't fight—"

"No, we don't. But still, we will protect those who belong to us." She dropped to her knees, gently gripping his shoulders. Her voice was kind, but firm. "You are a defender, dear heart. You were born to be one. Go with the other children, and watch over them as I would. Will you do that for me?"

Was there any other answer? "As you say, tamassran."

"Good. I know you will do well." She gave him a warm smile as she rose to her feet, and for a moment he forgot his fear. "Now, be off. I will see all of you children when the danger has passed."

* * *

The imekari remembered noise, dreadful noise, simultaneously horrifying and familiar. The younger ones cried; Tevinter had not intruded this far into the island for some time. They did not have the same half-remembered images the older children had. They had no recollection of the earth trembling under their feet, nor of the sharp, bloodless smell of magic in the air. They had not known this bone-deep fear before.

Somewhere beyond the darkness a  _bas saarebas'_  poisonous words rang out, the foreign tongue harsh and rude, and another round of attacks shook the earth. It took the imekari everything he had not to shut his ears or turn away. Seheron would rebuild itself. They always did and they always would. But in this moment, it was being torn down around them.

He imagined fighting them back with sword and shield, tooth and claw—blunt as his nails were—and his chest grew tight and his stomach sick.

And then he heard the ringing cry, deep and strong: " _Nehraa Qun!_ "The antaam had arrived, at last. The noise beyond the walls reached a sharp, desperate peak—and then abruptly ceased.

He was first out of shelter when the hatches and doors were unlocked, helping the others emerge into the air of a battle barely won. The adults were gathered around their wounded, and in their midst, as he had feared, was his tamassran. He ran to her. So did several of his brothers and sisters.

Her saffron robes were now dyed red from neck to toe, and her face was nearly white in its paleness. But she was still every inch a teacher and guardian, reaching out to reassure her frightened students even as her own eyes were misted in pain.

"Shh, imekan. It will be all right." Her fingertips left cool, red streaks along his cheeks. It would not do to cry in front of her; he'd never forgive himself.

"Yes, tamassran," he said, and his voice did not crack overmuch.

"You are not hurt, dear hearts?"

"No, tamassran," the imekari replied.

"No, tamassran," a ragged chorus of voices rose behind him.

"Then all is well," she said, victorious, closing her eyes against the sun's first bright rays.

* * *

When he was twelve, the imekari received a soul and a name. Remembering those who had raised him, Karasaad kissed his sword and chose, as they had known he would, to accept his duty.

* * *

Many years from then a Qunari soldier stands within the qunlok he was raised in, sword upon his back and a prayerbook in his hand. He reads a few verses from the Prayers for the Dead, bows solemnly, and turns his eyes to the inscriptions on the wall, streaked with the grey ash of incense. It is nowhere as grand as the black tablet in the Arishok's residence, but it is a record all the same of Qunari civilians who have fallen to the Imperium.

He doesn't have to look very long. This is something he's done many times before. There, in one corner, is the name of the woman he comes to honour: one of many, yet dear to him for all that. The tamassran had lived a long, full life many years after that attack; she had been a bearer of strong children, a dispenser of wisdom, the friend and sister to a multitude, the guiding star of a hundred lives.

But before she was born, the priests knew her; after she passed on, they remembered her, as they do many others. She is not truly dead while her memory is kept alive. She is not truly dead, as long as her people survive. You never forget your first teachers, after all: the good ones, your first and best light in the world.

An aged priestess approaches, recognising their visitor almost immediately. "You come again this year," she says to him.

"I honour her service," the soldier replies, putting away his book. "I and my brothers owed her our lives."

"She is still remembered here," the tamassran said, her voice soft in the shared understanding of a grief that can never completely fade.

"Yes," said Kithshok, "she is."


	21. U is for United

He was more than three months uncaged, lost sevenscore days and more (the length of it mattered less now than the shameful fact of its existence) and he resolved to never come within stomping range of the Warden again. Ever. For such a small bas, she had considerable power in those legs.

"So you're Dwyn of Redcliffe," the Warden said, a hint of amusement in her voice as she strode through the door she had just kicked in. As Sten ducked to enter the dwarf's abode, he nudged the broken lock with one mail-clad elbow. It thudded onto the pier and rolled into the water with a dull plop.

"Who wants to know?" the dwarf countered. Sten could see from his stance that he was itching to draw his weapons on his surprise guests, and so were the two human bodyguards flanking him.

"Just another duster on the surface," she shrugged. "Plus that big guy behind me. The Qunari. You bought a Qunari sword, didn't you?"

He narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "Maybe."

Enough was enough. They had travelled from lakes to mountains and every point in between looking, despite his better judgement, for a lost blade. "You didn't see your face when you told me what happened," she'd said when he had questioned her, just that morning. "It was like you'd lost a part of yourself. An actual part. Not just a thing." He had. He'd wanted to tell her that much, but the correct words just didn't exist.

But Sten was quite ready for the wild goose chase to just _end_.

"Surrender the blade before I lose patience, dwarf," he growled, and Dwyn's eyebrows rose an inch or two.

"Faryn didn't tell me he took it off a live giant." 

"Why don't you give it back to him before this gets...ugly?" the Warden said calmly, though her gaze would have put any prowling jungle cat to shame.

"Sounds like a great idea. Take the sword and leave." He indicated a chest in the backroom, and once they'd retrieved its contents they did leave. But not before the Warden had persuaded Dwyn to defend the helpless basra with them—and by persuade, he meant hiring him to fight. Sten harboured little hope of seeing him alive afterwards, but stranger things had happened.

Once outside, the Warden sent the rest of the party to Murdock with the good news. She then turned to Sten with the awkward package of oilcloth and twine in her arms. "I'm hoping it's the right sword, or we'll have to go back and cut off Faryn's little nuglets," she laughed. But while there was a teasing cast to her words, there was also an undeniable reverence in the way she handed him the massive blade.

Sten pulled apart the knots in the twine and immediately forgot how to breathe. She was stained with dark and darker blood, and in a disgraceful shape, but there was no mistaking her weight, the scars on her blade, and Talmaas' ribbons tied steadfastly around her hilt. Beyond all reason and logic, Asala lay in his hands again.

What does it feel like to become _whole_ when you have been _less_ for so long? How do you describe the sensation, almost painful in its sweetness, of a piece fitting back into its rightful place inside you? Sten was no minstrel. He could not say. It took some time to remember what it felt like to breathe without the silent weight of loss, or how to form words. "Strange," he heard himself say at length, as if from far away. "I had almost forgotten it. Completion." He felt his lips twitching upwards in wonder and relief, and he found the Warden was smiling right back.

He was whole again, the sum of his self at last reunited. He had been a hundred days lost and more, but now, and just in time for battle—now the Sten of the Beresaad _is found._


	22. V is for Vashoth

"I would ask the Sten," the grey one standing before him called out, a purloined knife in his hand, "if he still has problems finding shoes that don't pinch?"

Sten stood alone at the wind-blown edge between mangrove and open water. Only the horizon held the faintest glimmer of dawn light; the Beresaad didn't see him flinch, nor did they hear his sharp intake of breath. Even without the warpaint that should mark the Vashoth, he _knew_ this one. This one had been lost to them many moons before, when he walked out of the barracks and took three good men out with him. He tightened his grip on Asala, and took a step forward.

"You," Sten growled. And then he spoke a name: a milk name, a child's name, one no longer useful to anyone but a tamassran.

"You recognise me, then, brother," was his calm reply. "I had hoped that would make things easier."

"I do not keep company with traitors and murderers." His lips parted in a snarl. "You saw what I saw, once. The farmers cut down, time and again. The houses burned, the women that they take. The men they slaughter like dathrasi. And you join _them_!"

"None here wish to join the Tal-Vashoth!" the vashoth cried out, matching volume for volume. "All of us are grey under our paint, and we all bleed the same red!"

"Kathas, leave him!" The voice floated from one of the tiny boats bobbing in the brackish water. "Forget the great oaf and let us move!"

"I would make him see, first," the grey one said without turning. He was almost pleading now. "Walk away, Sten. These people here are upright men and women, not beasts given to baser instincts. We do not mean harm to our people. We only want to find our own way, no matter where it takes us. Let us go, and you won't see any of us again. Please. We just want to be free."

"You want your freedom?" Sten asked quietly. "Take it, then."

The one they called Kathas opened his mouth to speak, but his voice was silenced in his throat. He fell with eyes wide, clawing futilely at the spear jutting out of his neck. The ashaad, the Beresaad's newest recruit, hefted another spear in case his predecessor chose to rise again.

" _Vinek eva_ ," Sten said, just two short words, and the Beresaad in hiding nocked their bows. A flurry of fire arrows erupted from the forest, finding their mark in the makeshift coracles before them. Those that did not drown in fire and smoke fell quickly to the salty muck, and the Qun's own daggers and swords.

* * *

The beresaad made it back to the qunlok when the sun rose, covered in mud and ash. Sten hailed a taarbas and gave him the coordinates of their battle. Many lost blades would be reclaimed that day.

"The one who tried to parlay with us. He was your brother?" Ashaad asked as they returned to the barracks. He was still new, still young. He could be excused. For now.

"I did lose a brother," replied Sten, with warning lacing his every word, "but on a day many moons before this one."


	23. W is for Water

He was seventy-four days uncaged, and now knew they did not teach Grey Wardens to swim. A band of mercenaries had attacked the party, apparently targeting the bard. A one-plank bridge, a fire trap and a dwarf not quite used to heavy armour had proven an ill-suited combination. She would have drowned if he hadn't fished her out by one arm.

"You were ill-prepared," Sten said disapprovingly as the Warden dangled in his grip. "Qunari are taught to brave the waters at a young age."

"Shut it," was the most eloquent thing she could spit out between coughs and gasps for air. Water had streamed from every joint in her armour and dripped from her hair. Even now, some hours later with a fire going and the night closing in, she remained tight-lipped as the rest of the party had a good laugh at her expense. Only when the templar bent to murmur something at her ear did her features soften, just a little bit.

She sat on her own now, quietly polishing the iron suit that had been so ill-abused today. If she was not entirely content with her lot, she was, at least, calmer.

"You do not swim," he said, standing before her. It was not so much a question as a chastisement.

"This again?" she muttered, not quite under her breath. "You probably don't steal," the Warden responded aloud, though her hands never ceased in their motion. "Maybe you wouldn't be here if you couldn't swim. If I couldn't steal a purse or cut a throat...well, you'd probably be stuck with just Alistair over there." She looked up at last, a wry twist to her mouth. "Back in Dust Town, ain't enough clean water to cook with, let alone muck around in."

 _It was cruel for the Wardens to leave you unprepared_ , he wanted to say, but something about that look in her eye stilled him. He let his gaze wander past the fire and his hearing past the chatter of the camp, toward the thin, vague gleam and quiet rush of the river in the distance.

"It's not  _that_ fascinating." The Warden's voice interrupted his thoughts, a faint mockery tracing her words.

"It is what it is," he replied simply. Water ran past them and around them, despite the Blight. Despite its devastation. Despite everything. _Waves disturb the water; when they pass, the ocean remains_ , so the Qun said. There was too much water in rivers and in oceans, in your blood and sweat and tears, to ignore its power. To do so was to put yourself at risk for all things. Still, he did not have the words behind his tongue to say so--nor, to be honest, did he feel like it. The Grey Warden would have to find all this out on her own.

The dwarf put down her work at last, rolling her shoulders until one popped audibly. Without looking to Sten, she added, "I'm going to ask Alistair to teach me how to swim. No more sinking like a stone for me."

"Wise."

"He's a better choice than you, anyway. You'd let me drown!"

"I did pull you out of the river the first time."

"Point taken." She turned to look over her shoulder. "Hey, Alistair! Is that pot boiling yet?"

"Like magic!" his voice floated back to them. Sten grimaced; the Warden noticed, and sniggered as she rose to her feet.

"A hot drink is going to feel great at this time of night. You joining us, big guy?"

Eventually, he did.


	24. X is for Xenophobia

He was about a week uncaged, and it was night, and the dwarven Grey Warden was watching him like a hawk. He could feel her gaze on him as he paced out the camp's perimeters: unblinking, inscrutable, unnerving.

"Stop staring at me, dwarf," he finally growled, at the end of his patience.

"I have a question, Sten," she said in return, her gaze flicking automatically to the height of his chest before she adjusted to look him in the eyes instead.

"Speak, instead of hoping I will respond if you gaze at my back."

The Warden flushed, but pressed on. "I'll only ask once. Should I be afraid of you?"

He exhaled, as quietly as he could manage. As if it weren't bad enough that the other Warden looked at him like he was a dragon waiting to strike. (Or that the saarebas looked at him like he was meat. Or how the Chantry sister cast such pitying glances at him.) "I am Qunari, not a beast. Neither am I a mage or archdemon. I gave you my word to follow--"

"That's not what I'm asking, big fella. Should I. Be. Afraid. Of you?"

Sten looked down at the doughty dwarf not quite half his size, with the flimsy, second-hand armour and challenging look in her eyes. If he had half a mind to, he could snap her in half _. Rather like the farmers_ , he found himself thinking, but immediately quashed that thought. 

Quite truthfully,  _did_ they have cause to be afraid of him?

"...Only if you are on the opposite side of the battlefield," he finally responded.

"Good. That's all I needed to hear. As long as you don't stab any of us in the back, kick Gelert—" The wardog looked up and barked once, indignantly. "—or steal all the cheese, I'll have your back too."  _Steal cheese?_ he found himself thinking. It was a moment before he noticed her arm, thrust open-palmed in his direction.

"...You wish something more of me, Warden?" 

She set her head to one side, worry briefly flashing through her eyes. "It's a surface thing, isn't it? To seal a pact, you clasp hands."

 _It's a basra thing_ , he wanted to say, but simply nodded and shook her mail-clad hand once, firmly. "It is done."

"It is." Her laughter was almost nervous, pleased as if she had done something right. "You up to take second watch tonight?"

"Yes." And that ended _that_  conversation.

But in the following nights, having thoroughly interrogated the other Warden, the witch, and the chantry sister, she started peppering  _him_  with inane questions instead. The hound had no sympathy to offer.

* * *

The Grey Warden and her allies went on to face beasts in the shape of men, and men in the shape of beasts; the dead, the living, and everything between and beyond threatened them at every turn. But she kept her promise--he was no more a curiosity, or an inscrutable, mysterious  _other,_ than anyone else they chanced to meet.

When he really thought about it, he found he was surprisingly grateful.


	25. Y is for Yield

"You have been away a long time, Sten of the Beresaad," the Ben-Hassrath said, his voice almost companionable in the cool, incense-thick air of the inquisition chamber.

"Yes," he replied, keeping his voice level, the words polite. He knew exactly why he was there: after a year and more among the _bas_ , exposed to who knew what kinds of _hissra_ , he was no longer a known quantity. He was being tested.

"Then why didn't you return sooner? It shouldn't take a year to answer the Arishok's question."

"To answer it completely took time. The report I submitted to the kithshok covers everything of importance."

"It has been noted." The enforcer toyed with the scroll in his hands, glancing at the stark up-and-down writing. "But much can change between hand and paper. Begin at the beginning, Sten."

So he did. He spoke of the cold, inhospitable land, the camp near Lake Calenhad. The night raid. The chaos. The fall of the Beresaad. The theft of his sword.

"Your blade was lost. And yet you are here." Ben-Hassrath's voice was cool, quiet.

"She was found," was Sten's short response. His hand flickered, as if to touch his sword-belt, but he thought better of it at the last moment.

"The blade was found," the enforcer repeated. "But not by your hand?"

"Yes." And there the Warden came into his report, because to omit her would be disservice and to elevate her would be untruth. No failure was glossed over, no success left unspoken. Piece by piece he constructed the image of a thoroughly confusing woman, one who fought like a man and died like a warrior. He described Ferelden's uncollared mages, and the ways the basvaarad tried to maintain order. (Just the ones that worked.) He spoke of the Blight, the darkspawn and their origins, its ending. He spoke, briefly, of kuukis, and was listened to with mild interest.

"And did you find any who were worthy of  _basalit-an_ , Sten?" the Ben-Hassrath asked when he was finished.

"In all my travels, there was only a single one," he replied, throat quite dry. "The Grey Warden who sacrificed herself against the Blight."

"Then that is all. This information may yet serve a thousand who come after you." If he didn't know better, he'd say the Ben-Hassrath was smiling. "You have yielded to no force but the Qun in your travels. This is commendable."

Had he really, though? Sten tamped down that one sliver of doubt and inclined his head politely. "My thanks. I will take my leave."

It was only after he'd left the room that a redheaded elf stepped from the shadows of the room, her features twisted with doubt. "He speaks of great crimes, _besrathari_ ," she frowned. "It was not his hand that reclaimed his soul."

"But it was his soul and his hand that fought against the Blight, _besrathan_ ," the Ben-Hassrath said to his junior. "The Sten has seen and reported much that is useful. He has known great darkness, as well as the light. His worth is proven. Victory shall go with him."


	26. Z is for Zarape

This night, Kithshok sits alone in the qunlok gardens. It is a place of peace. There's no sound to be heard but the distant tide and the solemn hoot of an owl from the shadows. The air is heavy with the smell of cloudflowers and incense. As he watches the stars' parade through the heavens, his thoughts are his own--but they are interrupted by Qunra's voice behind him. “The hour is late. What brings you here?” she asks.

“I would seek some quiet after my watch,” Kithshok replies. The years have not been kind to him; his scars are the proof of a lifetime spent battling Tevinter and Tal-Vashoth and submitting to neither. But sitting here, with his sword in his lap and a worn old zarape draped across his shoulders, he looks very little like the man who once mowed down seven magisters in as many minutes.

The priestess laughs, a warm and teasing sound, as she fingers the frayed edge of his shawl. It’s threadbare where skin and cloth and iron have rubbed up against each other too often, and the patterns are dulled by age. But it still retains its warmth. “You’re going soft in your old age,  _kadan_.”

He casts her a baleful look as she sits beside him on the weathered stones. Just as he was once Sten, she was once Talmaas, a supplier of truth. Nothing has changed there, it seems. “And you have become more meddlesome,” he responds flatly. 

“The priesthood must ever be observant of our people.” Qunra arranges her robes more comfortably around her calves. “And even during the worst of the war, you remain at your men's side instead of turning to the priesthood. It is not just a mere need for quiet that occupies you tonight.”

He chooses not to answer right away, staring into the dense bowers before him instead. “Much has happened since the Blight,” he finally offers. It has been years since that fateful time. Soon they would celebrate the Tome of Koslun’s return, a major triumph indeed. But Kithshok would never forget the sound of bells, half-mournful and half-triumphant, that had rung out over Seheron that day as he trained his men to fight Tevinter mages. That day, the Tome was theirs again—at the cost of their best warrior.

Over the months that followed, he found out that a single  _basalit-an_ from the state of Kirkwall had bested the Arishok in single combat. A  _mage,_ at that, though the fact left a sour taste in his mouth. The overseer of the western docks, restored to his post, mentioned a strange sadness in the human’s eyes as he dealt the final blow; almost like regret. Kithshok wondered what the Grey Warden would have thought of the whole thing. (And when men of that floating antaam later describe this ‘Hawke’, he remembers a man from long-gone Lothering, with fire-bright eyes and crimson hair. He wonders still.)

“We have all grown since that time.” Qunra tilted her head at him, nudging him out of his reverie. “You brought back added knowledge to deal with the  _basra_  and  _bas saarebas_. You know this.”

“The memories of that time keeps me humble.” It's not that he  _misses_  them exactly—the Warden, the mages, the golem, the royal bastard, the bard, the elf, the soused dwarf. He certainly doesn't have to miss the mabari, who scarce hours ago begged Kithshok for a scratch behind the ears. On rare occasions, he does consider the possibility that the tide will bring old companions to his battlefields. But always, his concerns lie with the welfare of his people; it's for them he fights, and will fight to his last day. The enemy will ever strive to baptise the land with Qunari blood. The Tal-Vashoth still prowl society's edges like shadows. The jungle is still the jungle, implacable provider and destroyer both.

“Then have faith also in your soul, which does not submit. In your men, who grow strong and do not falter. In your people, who are enriched by the Qun.” She picks up the loose end of his shawl and lifts it back upon his shoulder. Her hand lingers there, warm and reassuring. She has seen him with his hair cut short, mourning a lost Beresaad; with his braids grown long in times of victory; covered in blood his own and not, walking the fine line between life and death. “We have fought this war together, always. It will be as it is meant to be.”

“ _Asit tal-eb_ ,  _kadan,_ ” he says, and when he bows his head for a moment she does the same, leaning against his shoulder. It’s a small gesture. It’s enough for him.

“Even knowing all this, Kithshok, are you still troubled?” she asks, addressing her sandaled feet. Kithshok's gaze returns to the bright, fixed light of Valokas’ pommel in the sky.

“Not enough to keep me from battle,” he replies bluntly.

Far across the Boeric Ocean, the sun is a faint orange glow on the horizon. Seheron begins to rouse itself, and both soldier and priest feel the dull hum of wakefulness stirring beneath their feet. “Look. It’s a new day,” she murmurs, and kisses him on the cheek. “Make the most of it, brother.”

“We will meet again after the Festival,” says Kithshok, and his word is as good as any promise.

“We shall. It suits you, by the way.”

“Oh?”

“The beard.” She gestures to the tuft of hair he’s been cultivating for some time, a smile flitting quick and bright across her face. “Looks good. Very fitting.”

“My thanks. Thought you’d like it.” He rises to his feet and leaves the temple, walking slowly back to the barracks as his home comes alive for the Festival of the Tides. This day, Tevinter is a little further than usual from his people's minds. Now, they do not merely survive—more and more, they  _thrive_.

It is, indeed, a new day, and the air is cloudflower-sweet in his lungs.

* * *

When the sun is high, they will call him forward. He will climb the steps of the qunlok once more, his armour newly polished and half his hair loose against his back. He will kneel before the surviving two members of the triumvirate—for just recently was their Arishok lost. The mind and the soul of the Qun will accept another into their ranks: one representing the body of the Qunari, strong and willing, always watchful, always alert. His eyes will reflect not one whit of fear.

They will buckle the crimson pauldrons to his shoulders, bestow upon him the ceremonial weapons of his calling, pierce his ears with six hoops of tumbaga. He will only flinch a little. A priestess will step forward with a woven zarape, banded in red and white, black and gold. She will drape it over his shoulders, this cloth woven with the history of the Qun, from Koslun’s birth to the present day. They are the stories of his people, and therefore his stories too.

When he rises, and the shawl falls to the stone, Kithshok shall be no more. He will turn to the cheering assembly, and raise his blade skyward. To his people, he will say: “Duty compels us,  _meraadan_. We will answer.”

And the Qunari, as a body, will thunder back: “ _Arishokost! Arishokost!_ ”


	27. Epilogue

The imekari, twelve namedays grown, looks reverently down at the broadsword in his hands. She is long, straight lines and clean, sharp edges. She is a blade that gleams like the sun on the ocean. She is a grip that sits snugly in his half-trained hands—though the weapon is heavy for him still. He looks up, eyes bright, at his leader. The sword is a twin to the weapon that hangs on the wall, just within the man's reach.

“She is yours now,” says the Arishok, whose brow is as smooth as the boy's own. “Do you know where this blade comes from?”


End file.
